R. Cameron Cooke

Rome: Sword of the Legion

“Woe to the conquered.”

– Brennus

I

The wind moaned over the sand.

It was an endless wind that scratched the powder from the tops of the dunes to feed the red cloud churning across the desert floor. The roiling wind searched for something to catch it, something that it could make dance or knock down. The wind howled, lifting the malleable earth from one spot to another in its desperate quest, but its piercing breath found nothing, only endless plains and more burning sand. Not a tree, nor a scrap of desert shrub, not even a blade of grass could be sought out in this accursed land.

The wind fought with the sun for mastery of this plain, but together they protected it from all trespassers, greeting the unwelcome with sand-choking thirst and death. For countless millennia, they had guarded these lands, burying the kingdoms of frail men who dared try to usurp them. Bleached bones and buried ruins stood stark still as their trophies – forewarnings to those who might try again.

At last, the wind discovered the newest of these interlopers.

Three camels lay in the midst of the maelstrom, seemingly impervious to the violent sands shifting all around them. Their bulky frames, with legs tucked under, were arranged in a small triangle. Stretched tightly and drawn between the massive beasts, a canvas sheet buffeted as if the next gust would carry it away. Beneath the sheet, three men huddled against the hides of their prostrate mounts. Each man covered his face with the slack of his headdress, for even the air inside the shelter was thick with fine dust. The wind outside had the persistence of a living thing.

“This is what you call a small outing, Roman?” one man uttered before quickly returning the cloth to his wind-burned face.

“I made no promises,” the deep voice of the largest of the three answered. The mail shirt worn beneath the desert cloak was visible at the neckline, along with the massive dimensions of the chest beneath it.

“No promises?” the other said hotly. He had the tan face of an Egyptian, but his features were rounder and softer than the Roman’s. He had the manicured hands of one who spent little time performing manual labor. “Promises are all we have heard from you for nine days. Nothing but promises! You have taken us farther and farther into this infernal desert, and have delivered nothing!”

“Calm yourself, Ganymedes.” This was the third man who spoke now. He sat calmly against the hide of his mount, with elbows on his knees. He too had tan skin, but of a different shade. He could belong to any of several races. “I infinitely prefer the wind to your endless rambling.”

“Watch your tongue, Demetrius,” Ganymedes snapped. “We may be far from the queen’s court, but that does not mean you can relax your respect for my position.”

“My apologies, Your Excellency,” Demetrius replied without much enthusiasm. “I merely meant to say that I believe the centurion knows what he is doing.”

“How can you say that after nine days with no sign of water – nay, no sign of life? This Roman talks of nothing but that which is out of reach. Always tomorrow, or over the next rise, or just up ahead. When will it come? Perhaps the sun has gotten to your head, Demetrius! You forget that this Roman would be better off if he left us in the desert to die!”

“Of course, that is not true. You well know he is bound to us by an oath. And he will never see a single denarii of the reward you have promised him if he does not take us to what we seek. Now, will you calm yourself?”

Centurion Lucius Domitius peered at his companions through the narrow slit in his turban. They were looking back at him, as if to find something in his eyes to confirm Demetrius’s statement. But he did not give them the satisfaction. No, it would be better if they were left guessing. The farther they journeyed into the desert, the more he had the advantage.

Many hours passed before the storm subsided and the fine dust began to once again settle back to the shifting dunes. With few words exchanged between them, Lucius and his companions loaded their camels to continue on their journey. Lucius noticed Demetrius removing a long wooden pole from a bundle of similar poles attached to the back of his mount. Demetrius then firmly planted the pole atop the nearest high dune, where the affixed flag instantly caught the wind and whipped around wildly.

“Have I not told you that is a useless endeavor?” Lucius said. “You have done that every day now for ten days. Those markers will not help us on our return. They are gone in the next gust of wind.”

“You will forgive me, Roman, if I don’t entirely trust your sense of direction.”

Demetrius appeared nonchalant over the whole affair, but Lucius knew that he was holding something back. Unlike the other two, Lucius did not lend a voice to his own suspicions.

Demetrius approached him and asked in an almost indifferent manner, “I was right, wasn’t I, Centurion? You are leading us there. I would be sorely distressed if I learned that your story about the priest was not completely truthful.” He rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. Demetrius was not a small man, and, like Lucius, he was a warrior by trade. Still, Lucius laughed out loud at the gesture.

“You have never tried me, Demetrius. You know little about me. But perhaps someday we will dance the dance of death together, eh? I am ready to accommodate you at anytime.”

Demetrius smiled guardedly. “I know enough about you to know that I would not prefer that. I would prefer we remained comrades in this endeavor. But you would do well not to discount my abilities, either!”

“Must I die of thirst while the two of you posture,” the paunchy Ganymedes called from his mount. “That Roman promised me an oasis. It is up ahead, or he is a liar! Oh, and don’t bother threatening me, Roman. I am already beyond caring. Give me drink, or give me your gladius that I may throw myself upon it. Let us go!”

As they rode, Demetrius kept a wary eye on the Roman. He reached down and patted the unstrung bow strapped to his saddle, happy that it was there in the event that he had to use it. It had been a wise precaution, especially since he had good reason to believe that the centurion was his superior at sword play.

Riding up ahead, Lucius knew that the Egyptian’s eyes were on him, as they had been from the moment the three men had started on this journey, and he considered what an unlikely turn of events had resulted in him crossing a desert he had never seen before, guiding two men whom he did not trust, nor they him.

They rode hour upon hour, their mounts leaving fresh tracks in the virgin sand while the sun baked them without mercy. The sky was devoid of even a single cloud to give them a moment’s reprieve. The heat and the endless repetitive gait of the long-legged desert beasts set Lucius’s thoughts adrift. Had it been only two weeks, or had it been years, since he was in Alexandria at the head of his century? Had it been only two weeks since he led them into battle? It seemed unbelievable, but it was not a mere trick of his sun-scorched mind. Yes, he had been there, in Alexandria, embroiled in another of Caesar’s perilous battles, fighting against a people with whom he had no quarrel other than their defiance of the blessed consul’s wishes. Now, his century were all slain, and he was far from Caesar and his Roman comrades. The ornate palaces and temples of Alexandria were hundreds of leagues from the accursed sands now stirred by his camel’s hooves.

His mind drifted back and began to play the events over again in his head.

II

Alexandria – the city of enlightenment, of the great library, of the great philosophers, of countless religious cults, where East met West, where merchants of a thousand kingdoms lighted, beckoned like a siren by the towering lighthouse, where goods and knowledge held equal value – this renowned place had become Caesar’s next battlefield.

The situation in Alexandria had been precarious, almost complete lunacy, one might conclude. Fresh from defeating the forces of Pompey the Great in the heart of the Greek lands, the consul Julius Caesar had arrived in Egypt with two understrength legions, the Sixth and the Twenty-Eighth. The men were all Pompeian troops, defeated in battle and now sworn in loyalty to Caesar – all except for a few dozen centurions, like Lucius, pilfered from Caesar’s own legions and assigned to lead their former enemies.

From the start, Caesar found himself in a hazardous position. Upon arriving in Egypt, he was immediately caught up in the inner turmoil between the squabbling heirs of the deceased pharaoh. Through the enchantment of the Egyptian princess Cleopatra, Caesar declared for her, and committed both himself and his men to her cause. This, of course, incensed Cleopatra’s rivals – her siblings – and the Romans immediately fell under siege by the more numerous Alexandrian army.

Lucius had only seen the fabled princess once or twice during the siege, and she had not particularly struck him as anything to bare his sword for. She was short, hook-nosed, with curves a bit too abrupt for his liking. She must have had a devilry in her tongue, however, because she had thoroughly conquered the great Caesar. The famed general was now devoted to putting her on the throne, seemingly ignorant of the odds against him – odds that made some of his blunders in Gaul look like country picnics.

In spite of the fact that Caesar and Cleopatra controlled the vast harbor palace and the great lighthouse out on Pharos Island, they were at a distinct disadvantage. Pharos Island connected to the city by a three quarters of a mile-long, earthen mole, and this was in the hands of the Alexandrians. The mole bisected Alexandria’s vast natural harbor into two distinct harbors – an eastern harbor, where the Roman ships were moored, and a western harbor, where the Alexandrian ships stood at anchor. The mole – or Heptastadion, as it was called by the locals – was an impressive feat of engineering even by Roman standards. One of the palace slaves had told Lucius that it was constructed more than three hundred years ago by the great Alexander himself. Not only did it serve as a causeway between Alexandria and the island, but it also allowed passage of ships between the two harbors by way of two channels carved out of the mole. One channel was at the extreme north end, near the island, and the other was at the extreme south end, near the city. Each channel was surmounted by a bridge that arched over the narrow strip of navigable water. These cuts were all well and good during peaceful times, when Alexandria’s harbor was teeming with merchant shipping. But, at the present, they were a bane to Caesar. With the Alexandrians in command of the mole and the island, and the rest of the city, they could attack the Roman ships at will, threatening Caesar’s only means of resupply – or of escape, should the need arise.

Caesar had but two depleted legions, a little more than three thousand spears. Cleopatra’s siblings had at least five times that. Over the course of several weeks, Roman legionaries had defended the walls of the palace from more than one attack. Lucius had been among them at the head of his century, withstanding a rain of missiles that never seemed to cease and continually countering an imaginative enemy that connived at every means to penetrate the palace defenses. Through every ladder bourn attack, every rush of the battering rams, even a few sorties outside the walls to demolish the enemy’s engines of war, the legions had fought as if they defended the Palatine Hill. But Caesar was never one to remain on the defensive. Though the enemy outnumbered him, he decided to attack. Caesar had concluded that the mole was crucial to his success, and he had resolved to take it.

The ten cohorts of the Sixth Legion were chosen for the assault, Lucius’s among them. Leaving the Twenty-Eighth, a scant few palace guards, and the convalescents to defend the palace, the cohorts boarded their ships in the dead of the night. Biremes and triremes manned by Rhodian sailors that Caesar had brought with him from the Greek isles pushed across and out of the dark bay unnoticed by enemy eyes. There were few senior officers in the undermanned legion, and Centurion Lucius Domitius found himself the senior man aboard his own ship carrying two centuries.

“Why are we leaving the harbor?” the signifer of Lucius’s century asked as they both stood by the rail watching the lights of Alexandria glide silently by. “Caesar lied, didn’t he? We aren’t attacking, we’re fleeing the city. Leaving our comrades behind to the mercy of those Egyptian curs!”

Lucius despised his signifer, and would normally have told him to shut his mouth and concentrate on things he understood, like carrying the century’s standard, but there were too many others who had heard the comment for him to remain silent.

“I don’t know how your precious General Pompey behaved,” Lucius said, his voice thick with scorn, “but in my years under Caesar, I’ve never known him to go back on his word.”

Of course, that was not true. The signifer did not seem to like that answer, either, but Lucius did not care. He did not think much of his signifer, nor of the rest of the men under him. They were all former Pompeian soldiers who had either deserted or been defeated while fighting for Pompey in Greece. With Pompey dead, Caesar – always the politician, always scheming for a leg-up – had adopted them as his own. They were on probation, and their only hope of survival, if they ever made it back to Rome, was to endear themselves to Caesar through unquestioning devotion.

Were it left to Lucius, they would have all been put to death. Now he found himself in command of a century of them, very much against his wishes. In fact, he very nearly had refused to join the expedition. After Pharsalus, his old legion, and many others had headed back to Rome instead of accompanying their general. Only the prospect of riches to be had in Egypt and Syria had goaded Lucius into the foolish decision to volunteer to be an officer in the Sixth. The appointment was only temporary, he kept telling himself.

True to Caesar’s word, the ten cohorts attacked in the morning. The fleet of transports had been taken outside of the bay, not to retreat, but to land on the seaward side of Pharos. This took the small Alexandrian garrison there completely by surprise. The legionaries quickly pushed the stunned defenders back into the small town that occupied the island. The Alexandrian defenders tried to make a stand, some of them taking to the roof tops to throw javelins down at the onrushing Romans, but they could not achieve any kind of organized resistance. They were hacked to pieces, driven from house to bloody house, leaving the formerly quiet seaside village a place of carnage and death. The few that did organize managed to form into rough phalanxes, and these were thrown across several of the narrower streets, hoping to turn them into bottlenecks where the Romans’ numerical superiority would be nullified. But even this did not stop the maddened legionaries, who formed and pressed in with their massive shields. They allowed the jabbing pikes of the phalanxes to penetrate the shield wall and then wrenched the fourteen-foot lances from their owner’s hands, all the while hurling pila over the front ranks to decimate the enemy’s rear. Those pikes that were not torn loose were knocked aside by the short gladii until the Romans were suddenly upon them and among them. One phalanx panicked after another. Each one that fell opened up an avenue for another to be taken from behind. By the time the morning sun peeked over the horizon, Caesar had the town, and the rest of the Alexandrians had surrendered.

Lucius had been at the heart of the combat, spurring his ill-trained century into the breaches and then reforming them to attack the next line of pikemen.

The Alexandrians were of poor caliber, and even the Pompeian legionaries had no trouble in making short work of them, all except for one unusually difficult contingent of Alexandrian regulars defending a strip of beach on the harbor side of the island. This unit had stood its ground after repeated assaults. They were led by a tall, magnificent looking officer wearing a jeweled Egyptian headdress and a glimmering bronze breastplate. The decorative paint around his eyes and the well-manicured beard gave him a dazzling appearance that distracted even Lucius in the heat of battle. His men were not like the other Alexandrians defending the village. They looked more like a royal guard, wearing immaculate bright, white tunics and headdresses and carrying large round shields polished to reflect the sun like mirrors. Under the direction of the dark-eyed officer, the troop of swordsmen had fought off every Roman attack, skillfully hiding behind their shields whenever the Romans threw javelins and then emerging with swishing blades whenever the Romans drew in close. And they had been well-trained in swordplay, beating off every century thrown at them.

At last, Lucius’s century was chosen to confront the stalwart defenders. Lucius was just forming his men for the attack when an ornate galley pulled up to the shore, and the well-dressed soldiers beat an orderly retreat to the waiting vessel. They did so smartly, under the cover of their shields, not losing a single man, the dark-eyed officer the last to step aboard. Lucius and his men pursued, but were driven under cover by a dozen archers perched on the ship’s stern deck.

From the deck of the galley, the dark-eyed officer made eye contact with Lucius who was conspicuous in his cross-plumed helmet. The officer’s thin lips smiled in derision, his hand thumbing a mocking salute much to the amusement of the ship’s archers, before the officer turned away and ordered the vessel to pull for the harbor.

Lucius was normally calm and collected in battle, but the long morning of constant instruction to his ill-disciplined troops, over things he would never have had to even voice had he been with his old Tenth Legion, had put him in a mood. And now this insult from the Alexandrian suddenly turned his mood into a rage. Breaking from cover, he snatched up a javelin and sprinted out to the shallows as the vessel’s oars began to rise and fall. The archers saw him and took aim, but then lowered their bows when the dark-eyed officer said something to them. Presumably, he had ordered them not to shoot, though Lucius could not imagine why. Deprived of their kill, the archers instead resorted to ridicule, making obscene gestures and lifting their tunics to expose their genitals in the direction of the single Roman centurion with the javelin, who was now well out of range.

But the archers did not know who they were dealing with.

Lucius never took his eyes off the galley as he reached for the coil of leather strap that hung loosely from his belt.

One of the archers standing at the galley’s bulwark would have done better not to have laughed when he saw the single Roman in the shallows throw the javelin. The missile looked feeble in the distance as it arched up into the sky and floated in the air for what seemed like ages. The unfortunate man realized too late that it had the distance, that it drew closer by twenty paces every heartbeat, and that the six-foot-long weapon was coming directly at him. At the moment the archer sensed he was in danger, the missile descended like a lightning bolt, its momentum violently driving it through his exposed abdomen, catching him in mid-laugh with tunic raised. The archer’s face registered the shock of what had just happen as his blood poured out onto the deck. The other archers stopped laughing as they watched their comrade crumple to his knees and then fall over the side, the javelin still firmly lodged in his body when both splashed into the harbor.

The dark-eyed officer appeared again at the stern of the retreating galley, the disdainful expression now gone as he stared back at Lucius in utter awe and confusion. And he remained that way as the vessel drew farther and farther away. As far as Lucius could tell, the Alexandrian officer never once stopped staring at him as the galley rowed back across to the south side of the harbor and was eventually lost from view among the myriad of Alexandrian ships moored there.

“That was incredible, Centurion!” A voice said behind him. “I have never seen the like!

Lucius turned to see his signifer along with most of the men from the century all nodding in wide-eyed agreement.

“How did you manage that?” the signifer asked in wonderment.

“While you were all wallowing in Italy with Pompey, pretending to be soldiers, I was with Caesar in Gaul and Germania.” He shot the signifer a scathing look as he rewound the leather strap and returned it to his belt.

“An amentum!” the signifer said, suddenly identifying the strap. “You must teach me someday, Centurion.”

“There are things learned in those lands that cannot be taught elsewhere. They must be experienced. They must be lived.”

The signifer nodded, accepting the answer, his face showing obedient disappointment. Lucius certainly could have taught him how to use the leather strap that had propelled the javelin four times farther than a man could throw it – a skill he had learned from a Gallic skirmisher – but he had no desire to.

Lucius studied the men of his century as they picked over the Alexandrian dead. They had fought fairly well, he supposed, after much goading. But the simple villagers garrisoning the island were not frontline quality, and they had been beaten easily. He wondered how his men might have fared had the Alexandrian officer and his guard made a stand on the beach. That would be the real test of their mettle, when they came up against the Alexandrian regulars, many of whom were themselves former Roman legionaries. The old veterans had retired and settled in Egypt, after subjugating the east under Pompey, more than a decade ago. Now, in a strange twist of fate, they had come out of retirement to defend their new home from soldiers trained by their old general.

The fools, Lucius thought. What idiot would come out of retirement to get a spear in the belly from his own countrymen? The bastards deserved to die.

Two days later, Lucius and the rest of the officers were summoned to Caesar. The general stood on a large rock as he addressed them, a bare-headed figure wrapped in a scarlet cloak that whipped in the stiff breeze. The white-capped waters of the eastern harbor and the outstretched mole lay behind him.

“Friends,” Caesar shouted over the wind, “You have taken Pharos, as I knew you would. Now that we have command of this island, the enemy cannot send their ships beneath this bridge.” He gestured to the bridge over the northern gap in the mole.

Indeed, no Alexandrian ships had attempted it all morning, lest they fall victim to the mass of flaming missiles that would surely come from the Romans controlling the land nearby. Caesar then directed them to look across the harbor, where the long land bridge joined the mainland.

“But our task is not yet finished. As you can see, the enemy still controls the bridge at the other end of the mole.”

Lucius could see the southern bridge far down the causeway, and beyond it, on the shore of the mainland, sat a small fortress commanding the approaches to the bridge.

“As long as the enemy controls that bridge,” Caesar continued. “Our fleet will be in jeopardy. We must finish the job, friends! We must take control of the bridge. Once it is in our hands, the enemy won’t be able to use the water passage beneath it, and we will control both harbors. The fortress beside the mole is the key. At dawn tomorrow, three cohorts will land simultaneously at the southern end of the mole and advance up the beach to take the fort. Three more cohorts will remain in reserve aboard ship, but I do not expect that they should be needed. There are only a few hundred of the enemy entrenched around the fort, no doubt troops of the same quality we encountered when we took this island. I expect the fort to be in our possession within an hour of the landing.” Caesar then paused and his face drew stern. “I want it understood by every one of you, that the fort’s machines are to remain intact. Any man who sets fire to a thrower or damages one in any way will be crucified on the wall. Is that understood? Once we have control of the fort’s engines, the enemy fleet will have to withdraw or risk being put to the flame. Once the fort is in our possession, the engineers will land and set to work filling in the gap beneath the southern bridge. The reserves are not to attack unless I expressly give them direction to do so. They are to remain aboard ship and out of range until called for. Is that clear to all of you?”

As logical as the strategy sounded, Lucius was skeptical of its success. The attack would call for a measure of discipline and timing he was not sure the Pompeians were capable of. Not to mention the fact that the so-called cohorts would be comprised of centuries not anywhere near full strength. Lucius’s own century had just shy of sixty men, and few fared better. Lucius overheard two former Pompeian centurions standing near him express their own doubts in hushed whispers. No doubt many of the others felt the same way.

“Damn it, I won’t do it,” muttered one tribune, loud enough for the other officers around him to hear, but not Caesar. “He asks us to do the impossible! But when the chips fall, will he be in the thick of the fight with us? No, the blessed consul will be watching comfortably from his yacht while we are all butchered.”

Lucius eyed the officer skeptically. He knew this tribune. His name was Rufio, an officer on Caesar’s staff and often one of his closest advisors. It was odd talk coming from one who was considered an intimate of Caesar, but it certainly got the attention of the others around him. They mumbled their agreement, and the protest quickly spread until the whole assembly was growing petulant.

“What is that noise?” Caesar demanded. “Is there a problem, Tribune Rufio?”

The ruckus was immediately silenced, and Rufio stood obediently at attention.

“No, General,” Rufio said respectfully, as if he had not just been talking treason.

But there was something else, something in Rufio’s expression that did not seem quite natural. Lucius could clearly see the tribune’s face from where he stood, a vantage point that the others did not share. There was something in Rufio’s eyes that spoke of mischief as he stared up at the general. Lucius then followed the tribune’s gaze to Caesar’s face only to discover that the general wore an equally artificial expression. It was subtle, but it was there. Had Lucius not campaigned with Caesar for so long, he never would have noticed it.

There! Had Lucius seen it, or was it just his imagination? The shadow of a smirk crossing the consul’s face for the briefest moment as he glanced back at Rufio.

“Friends,” Caesar finally said to the group. “There is one other thing you must pass on to your men.” Caesar paused, and then raised a fist in the air. “When you go into battle tomorrow, I will lead you!”

At this, the collection of officers erupted in a delirium of wild resounding cheers. Some held swords aloft, others raised their helmets, but all were now firmly behind the man whom they had been doubting only moments before. The shouts of adulation quickly transformed into the repetitive chanting of the general’s name.

“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!…”

Lucius chuckled inwardly as the former Pompeian officers exhibited an adulation for Caesar that now bordered on worship. But Lucius had not been deceived. He had been with Caesar for far too long. Always the shrewd devil, Caesar had anticipated their very thoughts, and had even planted his own confederate within their ranks to ensure that the seeds of doubt were nurtured and allowed to sprout. And then, with perfect timing, and the perfect words, he had evaporated all of their doubts in a single instant.

III

The next morning, as the first light of the rising sun painted the high clouds crimson, as the dark waters of the harbor began to dance in the early morning breeze, the attack commenced as Caesar had ordered. Three understrength cohorts, totaling no more than six hundred men, assaulted the mole from the eastern harbor. A dozen transports carried the legionaries inshore, driving in until the wooden bellies scraped upon the sand and bumped along the rocks. With a battle cry that could be heard by the reserve cohorts riding in the fleet in the bay, the six hundred legionaries poured over the bows of the transports and began to form ranks on the beach. From the moment the first boot hit the sand, they were taken under fire. A hellish onslaught of javelins and arrows erupted from the entrenchments near the fort and descended on the forming soldiers, piercing mail tunics and seeking out exposed necks, arms and legs. Fresh blood spattered the virgin white sand and the weathered shields of the Sixth Legion. The fifty-two year-old Caesar was with them, leading them. From the deck of his transport, sitting idly offshore with the reserves, Lucius could see the consul’s plumed helmet darting among the clusters of troops, until the three cohorts finally compressed into three giant testudos and Caesar’s plume disappeared inside one. Like three armored beasts, the creeping formations began to move, gliding up over the steep slope and onto the plain to advance on the fort. They had landed from the Roman controlled eastern bay at the stretch of beach where the mole met the mainland. To reach the fort, they needed to cross over the tapered spit of land to the western harbor where the fort sat on a bank commanding the approaches to the south bridge. That meant that every step toward the fort brought them nearer to the Alexandrian ships sitting in the western harbor and hovering near the shoreline like angry wasps ready to strike.

Lucius was certain that the ballista and catapult fire from the enemy ships would break up the testudos, but the giant missiles never came. Arrows and javelins, however, flew by the hundreds, enough to cover nearly every shield in the formation, until the testudos resembled porcupines more than they did tortoises. The three testudos continued the advance, never once stalling, but continuously pressing on under a largely ineffectual enemy barrage. When the formations had approached to within a few paces of the trenches, they suddenly opened. A mass of pila was hurled at the enemy works, and then the flood of Romans charged. Before Lucius could scratch his nose, he saw legionaries in the trenches, gladii rising and falling, and Alexandrians fleeing by the hundred. They seemed to abandon the fort more out of fear than out of defeat, and it wasn’t long before Roman helmets appeared along the parapets.

Some men standing on deck with Lucius cheered at the sight. What had seemed nearly impossible an hour ago, now seemed a reality. Caesar had pulled out a victory, yet again. He had taken the fort, and now every Alexandrian defender was either running for the city or lying dead in the works.

Lucius suddenly noticed that his signifer was by his side, the Wolf’s head adornment atop his helmet pushed back such that the wolf no longer appeared fearsome, but pathetically struggling to hang on to the soldier’s back.

“I tell you plainly, Centurion. I’d have never believed it unless I saw it with my own two eyes. The gods bless him, he was right. By Jupiter, he was right! I’m for Caesar until my dying day, mark you me.”

Lucius did not respond, lest he encourage more of the man’s senseless babbling. Still, the fool was probably only voicing what the rest of his men were thinking. Any of the Pompeian soldiers who had lingering doubts about Caesar’s greatness, would certainly have those doubts no more. Even Lucius was stunned by the ease of the victory. It had all been so simple. Too simple.

Now, all that remained was to turn the fort’s engines against the Alexandrian ships in the western harbor, drive them away from the mole, and land the engineers to fill in the gap. As if on cue, a signal flag fluttered from the fort’s parapets. The two transports sitting idly in the bay, responded immediately, coming to life as their banks of oars rapidly propelled them toward the shore. As soon as they had landed, several score diggers with their axes and spades disembarked and began marching toward the mole.

But something was not right.

Caesar was now in possession of the fort. That meant he had control of the giant ballistas on its walls. But if that were true, why were the Alexandrian ships not moving away? Surely they would be well aware of the danger and would take the prudent measure of moving out of range of the fort’s weapons. Instead, they sat at anchor in the fort’s lee as if nothing had happened. Why was the fort not letting fly with everything it had to sink the easy targets?

“What in Hades are they doing?” a soldier near the rail said incredulously, pointing at the fort.

Lucius squinted his eyes in the wind to see a mass of Roman shields emerge from the gates and earthworks. They quickly began to reform in the three testudo formations, as before, and again were taken under a heavy fire from the Alexandrian vessels.

This was not according to plan. Why, in Jupiter’s name, were the cohorts leaving the fort?

At that moment, a chill ran down Lucius’s spine as he deduced the only explanation for it.

Caesar’s entire plan was predicated on the fact that the fort’s machines would drive off the enemy fleet. What if the enemy had come to the same conclusion? What if they had destroyed or removed the engines? That would explain the scanty defense put up by the garrison. They had fled, yielding to Caesar a useless fortification that would quickly become his death trap. Caesar now had to move quickly to get out of the trap, and that certainly would explain why the cohorts were now flooding back out of the fort. But as Lucius watched, fully expecting the bristling formations to head back to the beach and the waiting transports, they instead took a left turn and began marching north up the mole. The mole was only wide enough to fit a single cohort, so the three testudos moved out onto the mole one after the other, all the while under the relentless missile fire from the enemy ships. Some of the enemy ships were literally bumping along the western side of the mole, moving along with the cohorts, which they pelted with a galling rain of stones and missiles. The freshly landed Roman engineers quickly scurried inside the creeping formations for protection, though the armored testudos offered little of it from the enemy ballistas, which were now being utilized to their fullest effect. Giant flaming bolts flew in abundance, wiping out entire files of men in a single fiery breath.

Lucius cursed inwardly as he realized that Caesar was not going to retreat. Certainly, the proud Caesar was determined not to let his enemy win the day. Ships or no ships, he was going to march up to the bridge and do what he had come to do, and he would not leave until the southern gap in the mole was destroyed.

It was a hasty, desperate, and foolish act, and one that played directly into the enemy’s hands. By marching his cohorts out onto the mole, Caesar had effectively walked into another trap, and this one was much more deadly.

Lucius watched helplessly as the trap was sprung.

A mass of armored infantry suddenly appeared at the edge of the city, numbering at least a thousand spears. They began marching in quick step across the plain toward the mole. At the same time, the hitherto docile ships in the rear of the enemy fleet suddenly began to move. Lucius saw the masts of the enemy vessels dancing above the mole. They moved in groups, a dozen dashing to the right and a dozen more to the left. Lucius quickly surmised that the craft were landing enemy troops on the far side of the mole, to the north and south of Caesar’s position. Moments later, his fears were confirmed when pikemen and swordsmen appeared on the mole in the hundreds. They immediately formed into phalanxes, the points of their fourteen-foot sarissas gleaming in the sun. Caesar was now surrounded, with well-armed infantry closing in from the north and south and a devastating fire coming from the enemy ships. Only the rocky eastern shoreline of the mole was left open. It was Caesar’s only hope of escape. The quick-thinking Rhodian captains, who had pushed their transports back into the harbor at the first sign of enemy troops from the city, realized the Roman general’s plight and drove their vessels to converge beside the mole near Caesar’s position.

But, even now, it was clear that Caesar was not intending to retreat.

As the enemy phalanxes approached from the north and south, a few of the less stalwart legionaries broke from the testudos, shedding their weapons and equipment and diving into the harbor. But after these few fled, the centurions quickly closed up the gaps and, by and large, the formations remained intact. The cohorts knew they would be in their element once close combat was joined, and they needed only to hunker beneath their interlocked shields until Caesar gave the order to attack. But the Alexandrians were not fools. They well knew the strength of the Romans, and they also knew the weaknesses. Instead of pressing in to squeeze the Roman cohorts like a vice, the Alexandrian phalanxes came to a halt just outside of javelin range. There they waited allowing the unremitting missiles from the fleet to continue their deadly work. Bit by bloody bit, the giant bolts tore gaps in Caesar’s ranks, skewering two or three men at a time, severing heads and legs, and turning the hot, shadowy spaces beneath the shields into intolerable shelters of butchery.

Lucius saw a score of half-naked warriors break from the Roman ranks, their long hair and beards streaming beneath conical iron helmets. Lucius knew these to be Caesar’s Gallic bodyguard. The Gauls broke, not toward the transports, but toward the enemy. The hopelessness of the situation had worked them into a mad frenzy, and now they chose to die like warriors instead of penned pigs. Lucius could hear their wild howls across the water, a howl he had heard on a dozen gray battlefields far from this place. Holding their long swords high, they charged the waiting phalanxes with a ferocity that made several of the Alexandrians run.

But the bulk of the packed enemy troops stood their ground. The handful of charging long swords was no match for the massed enemy. The charge of the Gauls melted away before the jabbing and thrusting sarissas until it was nothing more than a cluster of twitching bodies beneath blood-tipped pikes.

More Romans now ran, leaping from the rocks into the water by the dozen. Some managed to swim for the transports, but others sank out of sight under the weight of their armor. Like the seeds of a dandelion blowing in the wind, the testudos came apart. A few of the legionaries followed the Gauls’ example and attacked the phalanxes. A few held their ground around Caesar’s plumed helmet. But even the great general could not bring order to this chaos. The men around him were falling by the score. A complete disaster was in the making.

Lucius glanced at the other ships in the reserve fleet. The decks of every vessel were crowded with onlookers, but no attempt was afoot to reinforce their beleaguered general. They had Caesar’s express orders, not to attack unless so ordered by him. And that order had not yet come.

Lucius had had enough.

“Take us in!” he commanded the transport’s captain.

“But, we have orders, sir!”

In an instant, Lucius had produced his gladius and was pressing it to the reluctant man’s throat. “Closer to the mole! And hurry, damn you!”

Whips cracked, the drummer beat out a quick rhythm, the bireme slaves pulled on their oars, and the vessel thrusted toward the mole. Lucius directed the captain to drive at the cluster of surviving Romans as if they planned to help the pressed troops in escape. But at the last moment, he ordered a change of course. The transport veered to the right, and made all speed for the enemy line that was working its way down the mole from the north. The Alexandrian phalanx paid no attention to the single bireme that now headed directly for them. They were far too consumed with the prospect of capturing the great Caesar.

“Come on, you Pompeian dogs!” Lucius shouted. Then, with a war cry, he leapt from the bow just as it touched the mole, flying into the tightly packed enemy ranks. Not expecting an attack from their left, the pikemen could not turn their long and interlaced spears in time to meet the new danger. Lucius had left his shield on the galley in order to manage the jump, but he did not need it. He came down on two men with his gladius swinging, slicing into their necks before either knew what had killed him. Following their centurion’s lead, the men of the century also jumped from the galley into the fray, adding to the confusion that was quickly spreading through the enemy phalanx. Within moments, three score jabbing gladii were mercilessly cutting their way through the formation with a fiendish fury, stabbing one Alexandrian in the groin after another, subjecting the disoriented enemy to the machine-like meat grinder that every Roman legionary became in battle. Three inches in, pull out, stab again, move on. Blood flowed down bare legs. Entrails oozed between scaled armor plates. The song of the gladii sang, and the enemy died. Lucius’s cross-plumed helmet led them on, driving farther and farther into the tight phalanx. Some of Caesar’s troops, seeing the success of Lucius’s men, rushed forward to attack the phalanx’s front.

Terror then spread through the enemy ranks. Though they outnumbered the Romans nearly four to one, the ruthlessness of the simultaneous attacks on their flank and their front spurred them into a panic. Their cursing officers could not get control of them, and finally, they broke and ran for their ships, leaving behind a causeway covered with twitching bodies, abandoned sarissas, and broken shields.

Lucius caught his breath for a moment before arrows from the enemy fleet forced him to find an abandoned Alexandrian shield under which to take cover, prompting his surviving men to do the same. As he crouched behind the shield, he counted thirty-nine of his original century still standing. Add to that about a dozen more men that had come from Caesar’s cohorts. Every one of them was out of breath and covered in blood, from their own wounds and the wounds of those they had slain.

The attack of Lucius’s century had been successful. It had given the three beleaguered cohorts, farther down the mole, a small measure of breathing room. It had allowed Caesar to finally do the sensible thing and order a withdrawal. And he must have done just that because the cohorts were now falling back while a few troops remained behind to hold off the phalanx attacking from the south. The transports now came in close to the rocks. Legionaries cast away weapons, shields and armor to try to swim for them. There was little order once the troops hit the water. They swam for the nearest transport, regardless of the number of men already aboard it. Lucius saw one such ship, low in the water, its decks and rigging covered with a mass of soaked troops, capsize suddenly and sink, taking most of the men aboard down with it. But even that did little to dissuade the panicking soldiers from crowding aboard the other craft. In the hundreds of splashing arms and legs, Lucius lost sight of Caesar, but he assumed the general had made it to one of the vessels and was now pulling away from the mole.

Lucius knew that he had done all he could. The rear guard to the south was already being overwhelmed by the enemy phalanx there. It was now time for him to get his own men off.

Glancing over his shoulder, he fully expected to see his own transport waiting dutifully beside the mole, but it was not there. The galley had pulled away, and was now rowing back to the fleet. Lucius could see the ship’s master looking back at him over the stern rail, smiling sardonically and making an obscene gesture. The bastard must not have appreciated Lucius’s sword point against his throat.

Lucius looked north. The causeway was open, and there was a chance he and his men could make a run for Pharos Island. But before he could get the order out of his mouth, a new group of enemy vessels pushed up on the western side of the mole, unloading hundreds of fresh troops to block off the escape route. Lucius and his men were now trapped between two enemy formations closing from the north and the south. The Roman transports were now all pulling away from the shore. No one was coming to the assistance of the few legionaries left on the mole. They were being written off, as the rear guard had been.

Lucius cursed inwardly before shouting, “Testudo!”

The two score troops with him instantly formed a tightly packed shield-covered square. Lucius did not think that his men would be any less likely to fall victim to the giant flaming missiles coming from the fleet, except that the warships carrying the larger weapons had been down the mole opposite Caesar’s position and would now have to maneuver slightly to bring their ballistas to bear on Lucius’s troops. The oncoming enemy troops, however, did not appear to be planning to wait for that. They had the blood lust in their howls and cries, and they were coming on, faster and faster, each phalanx determined to be the one to finish off the remaining Romans.

Lucius peered between the breaks in the shields to find what he was looking for. And he found it almost immediately. To the north, the phalanx was fully organized and intact, a bristling row of spear points, from one edge of the mole to the other, advancing steadily. The enemy formation to the south, however, was a different story. Its front rank was irregular, still not having fully recovered after annihilating Caesar’s rear guard. In one spot, a large space, five men wide was open and not yet filled in by the rear ranks, who were carrying their pikes upright and not extended before them. Lucius knew this was his only chance – not of survival, but of making the enemy pay for every last Roman corpse.

“Listen to me, all of you!” Lucius shouted to his soldiers over the endless rain of arrows and stones striking the upturned shields. “When I give the word, break formation, hold your shields to the right, and follow hard on my heels! Understand? Kill every bastard in your path! Every one you see! Don’t stop killing! Show me you are true sons of Rome!”

The sweaty, blood-spattered faces in the shadows did not appear overly confident in his plan, but most of them nodded.

“Come on, you dogs!”

Lucius burst from the formation with a cry and leapt over an Alexandrian corpse.

The sight of the fierce, broad-shouldered centurion wearing such a menacing snarl beneath the cross-plumed helmet was enough to give the enemy pause. They stopped their advance, not from any orders from their officers, but because they could not comprehend the foolishness of such a move. But Lucius and his men did not give them much time to think about it. Holding their shields in their right hands, to fend off the missiles from the enemy ships, the legionaries charged in a wild fury that could only be described as berserk. A handful of them stopped to cast javelins at the phalanx, but this hesitation cost them their lives. They became the chosen targets of the enemy ships and were soon bristling with arrows from head to foot. The rest followed Lucius directly into the gap in the enemy, swinging shields, jabbing with swords, and attacking their foe with a savagery that the packed Alexandrians had not anticipated. With ranks packed six and seven men deep, the panicking pikemen in the closer ranks could not get away from the Roman attack, the pressure of the men behind them pushing them into the carnage. They died on Roman sword points, slicing deep gashes with lightning rapidity to their bellies, groins, and necks. Blood spurted from a dozen severed arteries, spraying upon shields and armor, and men began to fall.

Eventually, the Alexandrians recovered from the shock of the attack and began to close ranks around their attackers, forcing the Romans into a circle of defense, the edges of which were tipped with crimson gladii and piling bodies.

Ducking the thrust of a pike aimed for his neck, Lucius spiked his sword down onto the Alexandrian’s exposed left foot, severing the toes and starting an effluence of blood. The man crumpled from the pain affording Lucius an opening to slice his sword half-way through the man’s neck. Two sword-wielding Alexandrians replaced the fallen pikeman. Lucius instantly shoved into one with his shield, throwing off their coordinated attack and allowing him to take them on in turn. Within moments, both were stumbling to the rear, holding their intestines inside their sliced open bellies.

But it did not fare as well for the other legionaries. In spite of Lucius’s continual shouts of encouragement, the pressing enemy ranks were too much for them. The man to Lucius’s left received a razor sharp spear point through his throat that tore out his wind pipe and left him a gurgling mess. Romans on the other side of the circle were falling, too. The enemy was not throwing javelins, for fear of hitting their own, nor were the enemy ships firing, for the same reason, but the pikemen, once organized began killing the Romans, systematically, one by one.

“We can’t remain here!” Lucius shouted to the dozen men still standing with him.

They all knew full well that nothing could survive in front of well-packed ranks of pikemen, but the instinct was to stay in the circle. Lucius had to break them out. He had to get them into the rear of the enemy again, where the pikes could not be turned so readily.

“Follow me, now!”

Lucius threw his shield back-handed at the rank of Alexandrians in front of him, sending the disc into the faces of two pikemen and forcing them to recoil. In that instant he separated their sarissas and drove between them, narrowly dodging another pike thrust at him from one of the rear ranks. The legionaries followed him, and soon they were killing again, slaying the enemy who were reluctant to drop their pikes, but who could not hang onto the fourteen-foot-long weapons and avoid getting stabbed by the slicing gladii. Lucius maimed and killed until his arm was red from hilt to shoulder. He counted only five of his men on their feet, including the signifer, jabbing and killing beside him. The wolf's head atop the signifer's helmet had been mangled so badly from the repeated jabs of the pikes that it no longer resembled a creature of this earth. One jab had left a long gash above the signifer's eyebrows. It had bled heavily, leaving a solid mask of red on his face broken only by his white eyes and gritted teeth. Lucius knew that he himself had been wounded several times. He could feel blood trickling down his leg, but the battle delirium was upon him, and he did not stop to think. He just kept killing.

He saw a bright white tunic in the crowd, several of them, and had the momentary sanity to consider that these were the same men he had encountered on Pharos. He stabbed one of these through the throat, and the white tunic turned crimson in a waterfall of blood. Eventually, the white tunics disappeared in the maelstrom of human suffering and slaughter. He quickly forgot about them and continued to kill. He killed and killed, knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before he and his men were overpowered by the sheer weight of the enemy numbers.

But, at that moment, when the sword was growing heavier in his hand, and his arms felt as though he could not raise them again, the press of Alexandrians suddenly stopped. An authoritative voice shouted from the enemy rear, and the pikes receded, backing out of reach but still enclosing the handful of Romans, whom did not resemble anything human at all, covered from head to foot in blood with Alexandrian corpses piled two and three deep around them. Lucius saw dozens of enemy faces glaring at him over the dripping spear points. They muttered curses at him, but did not advance. They held back.

“What are you waiting for, you sons of whores?” Lucius spat at them. “Come and finish the job!”

“All in good time, Centurion,” a voice said from the enemy ranks. It took Lucius several moments to pick out which of the faces staring back at him the voice belonged to. But he finally found the face in the crowd – the face that was wearing the same small, thin smile outlined by the same well-groomed beard he had seen before.

It was the dark-eyed Alexandrian officer, the same officer he had encountered on Pharos, once again resplendent in bronze breastplate and ornate headdress. He stood out from the others, and Lucius could only conclude that he was royalty of some kind. But the smug, curled-lipped smile half-prompted Lucius to hurl his sword at the bastard.

“You are beaten, Centurion,” the officer said evenly. It was an elegant voice with an articulation that could only have come from years of formal education. “Order your men to drop their swords.”

“Stand fast!” Lucius said to the five out of breath legionaries. “We will die with swords in our hands, and take a few more of these whore-spawn to Hades with us!”

“There is no reason for that, Centurion,” the officer said. “You will not be harmed in any way. You have my word.”

Beside Lucius, the tired signifer glanced at him with uncertainty, as did the others. They knew their stand could only last for so long. Eventually, they would be overcome. By surrendering they at least had a chance.

“Stand fast!” Lucius demanded as the five legionaries looked at one another, and then looked at him, and then let the swords fall from their hands.

“Sorry, Centurion,” the signifer said with a pained expression. “But he is right. We are beaten. Jupiter have mercy on us.”

“Stand fast, damn you!”

But the soldiers were already filing through an opening in the sarissas. Once through the front ranks, Lucius lost sight of them, and the spear points closed in once again. Lucius now stood alone, one man against hundreds. He could no longer see the dark-eyed officer, and he assumed the end would soon come. He saved his strength for the final onrush, finding solace only in the certainty that he would at least kill a few before his body was run through.

Then he heard voices raised on the other side of the enemy ranks, but he could not make out what was happening. A man screamed, and then another. He saw swords slice high in the air, and then all was silent once again. He did not know what had caused the commotion, but his suspicions were confirmed an instant later, when five bloody heads were lobbed over the ranks to land at his feet. The signifer’s blood-caked face looked back at him with a gnarled expression, frozen there from the moment the Alexandrian blade had cleaved his neck in two. The dead man's eyes seemed to carry a look of guilt and shame.

“You whelp of a whore!” Lucius said to the Alexandrian officer who was peering at him over the ranks.

“It is on your head, Centurion!” the officer said curtly. “I gave you a chance to drop your sword. You alone have chosen this path of foolishness! But it does not have to be so with you. Now, drop your sword.”

Lucius laughed. “You think me mad? I will not. Finish your work, but know that I will send some of these curs to the afterlife before it is done!”

The officer appeared extremely annoyed by the remark. “I said drop your sword!”

“Why should he yield his sword, Demetrius? Let him keep it.” This was said by another, someone Lucius could not see. The high-pitched, nasally voice had come from the other side of the ranks.

“Remove them that I may see this Roman,” the voice commanded. It had a tone of condescension to it.

The officer – evidently his name was Demetrius – nodded resentfully, and then gave an order. The line of pikes opened before Lucius to reveal an unarmed man, slightly built and bald-headed. The unimpressive figure exuded anything but the deportment of a warrior. He looked more like an administrator, but the Alexandrian troops lowered their heads as he passed by. His immaculate white tunic, trimmed with glimmering gold and jewels, bulged slightly at the belly. Like the officer, his eyes were painted in the Egyptian style, but they did not change shape in the slightest measure when he smiled at Lucius. They seemed never to blink.

As the man approached, he was flanked by the officer and another Alexandrian both with swords drawn, clearly to protect the unarmed administrator should the crazed Roman suddenly attack. Stopping several paces away, the administrator smiled cordially at Lucius, waving a hand in the air. After an awkward silence, the administrator finally shot an irritated glance at the officer.

“Ahem. Presenting His Excellency, Ganymedes, Chancellor of Egypt, Royal Council to the Queen Arsinoe, the one and rightful ruler of the Two Lands,” the officer recited dryly.

Lucius said nothing but silently considered whether he had the strength to kill all three of them in a single leaping sweep of his blade.

After realizing that the Roman was not about to bow, the bald man said, “And who are you, Roman?”

“Lucius Domitius, centurion of the Tenth Legion.”

“The Tenth? Please, do not bore me with tricks, Centurion. My agents inform me that Caesar has but two legions in Alexandria, and those are the Sixth and the Twenty-Eighth.”

When Lucius did not respond, Ganymedes went on. “But no matter. And you were born in Italy, were you?”

“Spain,” Lucius replied.

“Even better.” Ganymedes smiled. “And I suppose you are wondering why we are so interested in keeping you alive.”

“I am not,” Lucius replied, kicking one of the freshly severed heads at his feet. “The Egyptian lust for torture is well known.”

“No less than the Roman’s. But, dear me, that has nothing to do with it. Do you not realize, Roman, that I have a hundred slaves at my disposal, day and night? I could have any one of them thrown to the crocodiles with a snap of my fingers – were I as blood-thirsty as you assume.” Ganymedes’s eyes wandered to the crimson-stained gladius gripped firmly in Lucius’s hand, and then quickly shot back to his face. At any other time, I would not hesitate to have you flayed alive and your skin hung from the wall, but there is a time for everything. For now, you have been, shall we say, chosen.”

“Chosen by who?”

“You have demonstrated remarkable skill with the sword, Centurion. Your bravery is unquestionable. Clearly, you are a warrior without equals, and only the greatest of warriors can stand up to the quest that lies before you.”

“What quest?” Lucius said abruptly.

Ganymedes eyed him thoughtfully, and then said, “Not here. There are too many ears. You must come with me, Centurion, if you want answers – if you want to live. I assure you, it will be lucrative for you – that is, if you have a penchant for gold. The alternative is to remain here and die under the spear. I am sure Demetrius will be more than happy to accommodate you.” Ganymedes cast a glance at the Alexandrian officer, who surprisingly appeared anything but eager to carry out such an order.

So they both had a stake in this quest, whatever it was, thought Lucius. As much as he wanted to bury his sword to the hilt in Demetrius’s throat, he was intrigued. Lucius could not imagine why these Alexandrians wished to keep him alive, and he wanted to know more. That and the prospect of gold, his entire reason for joining the Roman expedition in the first place, was quickly driving the battle rage from him. Perhaps, if he cooperated, and this was not some elaborate ruse, there would be time and opportunity for taking care of Demetrius later.

Ganymedes sighed impatiently, tapping one foot and looking at the sun. “I do not have all day, Centurion. So, make your choice. But I warn you, this is my final offer.”

IV

Lucius sat on a bench in the open courtyard of a large and ornate house, shoving handful after handful of olives and grapes into his mouth while the silent slave girl stood by holding the platter of food. The courtyard was entirely encircled by the house, much like a Roman house, and he could see the clear blue sky through the skylight above him. The house was large enough to be a palace, but it was not anywhere near the palace complex, as far as he could tell, judging from the many twists and turns through the city’s backstreets and alleyways that he had been led through to get here.

Now, he hardly resembled the blood-covered warrior that had been fighting on the mole only yesterday. His clothes and armor were gone, removed by a contingent of curvy, black-haired slave girls in sheer white gowns. They had bathed him in waters that smelled of lotus petals, the touch of their silky skin and nudging breasts against his aching body awakening a lust in him that had lain dormant through weeks of siege and fighting. But his advances had all been spurned. The girls simply smiled with their lips and continued rubbing him down. Evidently their orders only went so far.

After withstanding an equally arousing oil rubdown by delicate hands, he now lounged on a padded bench while filling his aching belly.

He was just beginning to wonder if he had really been killed out on the mole and had somehow entered the afterlife, when a door opened and Demetrius entered the courtyard.

His expression was not altogether happy, but not unpleasant either.

“I see that you have been well cared for,” he said, cordially. “You see? I keep my word.”

“You did not keep your word when my men surrendered.”

“You will find, Centurion, that in this part of the world you must listen carefully to anyone making you an offer. I had extended the assurance of safety only to you. Your men wrongly assumed that their lives, too, would be spared.”

“I’ll admit they were fools.” Lucius eyed him while fingering the hilt of the blood-stained gladius that lay beside him on the bench. He had refused to let the girls take it from him. “But they were Romans, Egyptian. And they were my men. I will repay you someday. Mark you me.”

Demetrius smiled. “Yes. Well, that brings to mind a point that I am afraid I must insist on.”

“And that is?”

“You must relinquish your sword.”

“Now who’s going back on his word?”

“It is nothing to concern yourself with. Would we have taken the pains to bathe and feed you had we planned to harm you in any way? I simply cannot allow an armed Roman to be in the presence of Her Majesty, the queen. You understand.”

“Queen?”

Demetrius appeared somewhat uncomfortable when he assumed the droning tone, “The all-powerful Queen Arsinoe, ruler of the Two – “

“Alright, alright. I’ve heard all of that before. But I didn’t realize the Alexandrians had a queen. I understood the old king died and now his whelps are squabbling for the thro -”

“Her Majesty is coming here to meet with you,” Demetrius curtly interrupted him.

“The queen comes to me?” Lucius chuckled mockingly. “I’m honored.”

“Don’t be. This is Her Majesty’s house. You are a guest of Ganymedes. It is at his prompting that my queen comes.”

“The queen takes her orders from the eunuch then?”

Demetrius shot a baneful look at him, and Lucius detected an aspect of contention in the Alexandrian officer’s expression. The dark-eyes actually looked pained more than they did angry, as if there was some truth to what Lucius had said.

“Now, Centurion,” Demetrius said, after regaining his cordiality and extending a hand. “Your sword, please. You have no need of it here, I assure you. You are quite safe.”

“I’ve heard of your queen, and this Ganymedes character. They stand much to gain if Caesar and Cleopatra are defeated. Your people will accept them as their new rulers, is that right?”

“Your point?”

“The point is, I think that before long, you and that Ganymedes are going to ask me to betray my comrades.” Lucius smirked, while placing the gladius in Demetrius’s hand. “When I refuse, I suspect I might need that again.”

Demetrius smiled, but said nothing. He handed the weapon to one of the slave girls who padded away with it on bare feet.

“Cover him,” Demetrius commanded abruptly to another pair of girls, who quickly produced a silky white sheet and draped it over Lucius’s bare loins.

The next moment, the doors were thrown open by two brawny, black-skinned guards cradling immense, flat-bladed swords.

“All hail Her Majesty Queen Arsinoe!” one of the guards boomed.

The entire courtyard assumed a bowed position, with heads held low between outstretched arms. Demetrius angrily motioned for Lucius to do the same, but Lucius refused mirthfully.

A small woman in a wispy flowing white dress entered the room. Her face was stoic, making her delicate features all the more alluring. She had skin as pure as jasmine, and her shoulder-length black hair was woven with gold flakes. A wide gold band high around her slim waist accentuated her rounded hips. The dress was open down the front revealing the inner curves of what appeared to be nearly perfect breasts.

Lucius guessed her to be no more than twenty years old, and he caught the double-take of her young, wide eyes when she noticed that he was not bowing like the others. For the briefest of moments, her eyes drifted to his bare chest and lower regions, before she pretended not to notice him at all and quickly resumed the deportment of a royal princess.

She was followed into the room by Ganymedes and an assortment of attending girls dressed in a similar fashion to herself, one of them oddly pulling a cheetah along on a leash like a pet. There was someone else, too, with the royal party – a strange-looking man dressed in a black wrap, gold armbands, and a headdress that completely covered his face. The headdress had the face of a falcon with fierce eyes that stared wildly ahead. This priest – if that’s what he was – stood a few paces behind the queen with hands clasped in front of him.

An attendant clapped twice, and everyone returned to what they had been doing before.

“Ganymedes,” said Arsinoe in a strong voice that did not match her lithe figure. “Why does this Roman not bow before my greatness?”

In an instant the eunuch was at her side. “Er-uh. Take no offense, Great One. These Romans are largely an uneducated lot. They have little understanding of the gods that walk among us, like your greatness.”

“So, you bring me an illiterate oaf to perform this most sacred of tasks?”

“Please, Great One,” Ganymedes pleaded reverently. “If we needed wisdom, we would need only to consult your greatness. But this errand calls for a great warrior, and that is what I have brought you. This Roman slew several score of our soldiers on the mole yesterday. He is a Roman centurion, one of Caesar’s finest, with many badges of honor from many battles.”

Lucius considered that the slick-tongued eunuch had no doubt seen the half-dozen circular emblems that ornamented the front of his mail shirt.

“Does he meet the requirements? Is his blood pure?”

“I believe he does, your greatness.” Ganymedes then gestured to the priest with the bird headdress. “But only Khay can tell us for certain.”

Arsinoe then turned to the priest. “Khay, these are your requirements. Does this Roman qualify?”

The priest Khay said nothing, but simply clapped his hands together once and then rapidly advanced across the room toward Lucius. He swung his arms wildly as he walked, and the attendants, evidently fearful of the eccentric priest, cleared a wide path for him as he came.

Once in front of Lucius, Khay began sniffing audibly through the mask, moving around Lucius from one side to the other in spasmodic motions. Once the smelling ritual had concluded, a cross-like metallic rod suddenly appeared in the priest’s hands. The cross was half the length of a man’s arm with a loop on one end. Khay held the cross from the looped end allowing Lucius to see that the opposite end had a sharp point. Then, without warning, the priest drew the point straight across Lucius’s chest from one side to the other, leaving a dark streak of dripping blood to mark its path. Lucius winced from the suddenness of the attack, one of his large hands shooting out to take the priest by the throat. Khay instantly dropped the blood-tipped cross and began desperately groping at Lucius’s rock-solid grip that was quickly squeezing the life out of him. For a few moments the courtyard was silent, save for the suffocating priest’s labored breathing, clearly audible through the bird mask. No one came to Khay’s aid. Instead, they all stood dumb-founded and in shock as the formerly menacing priest gasped for air and went to his knees under the Roman’s grip, all except for Demetrius, who appeared somewhat amused at the spectacle.

That is, until a look from Ganymedes prompted him to intervene.

“Release him, Centurion.” Demetrius stepped forward and placed a hand on Lucius’s immense flexing forearm. “The letting of blood is part of the ritual. Khay will not harm you.”

Lucius glanced at the queen, whose wide-eyed expression appeared to be brought on by astonishment more than anger. Then, he let Khay go. The priest fell to the floor coughing and wheezing as the air returned to his lungs.

“Captain Demetrius!” Ganymedes said tersely. “We will hold you responsible if this Roman gets out of hand again. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Councilor,” Demetrius replied with a bow, his face now flushed.

Lucius saw Demetrius and Arsinoe exchange a private look that spoke of a deeper history between them than just captain of the royal guard and queen. Again, the glimmer of resentment, or was it jealousy, appeared subtly in the officer’s visage.

After several awkward moments of silence, Khay had regained his feet and had adjusted the crooked bird headdress. Once again, the priest had the cross in his hand. He lifted the headdress slightly, exposing only his mouth, and then ran the point of the cross across his tongue, allowing Lucius’s fresh blood to mingle with the saliva there. Khay then rolled the mixture around in his mouth while reciting an incantation, Ganymedes and Arsinoe both looking on with nervous anticipation.

Finally, the priest raised his hands and said something in the Egyptian tongue. He then repeated the words in Greek, and the room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“He is, Great Lady!” Ganymedes said with delight. “He is a pure heathen! Not one drop of Egyptian blood flows in his veins. He is perfect!”

“Bring him before me,” the young queen commanded.

When Lucius stood before her, his chest even with her face, he caught a glance from her big eyes.

“You will swear loyalty to me, at once, Roman, and denounce my sister and brother! You will also worship me as your god. On your knees!”

“I will not,” Lucius replied.

“Demetrius!” she said hotly, “Teach this Roman how to show respect!”

But before Demetrius made any move to obey, Ganymedes interceded. “Wait! Great Lady, your greatness should not be concerned with such trivialities. We have the prophecy fulfilled, and that is all we need. Let this foolish Roman serve who he wishes, as long as he performs what we demand of him. Men like him do not respond to torture. They respond only to gold, and I have promised an ample sum if he cooperates.”

“But I want him to worship me as his goddess! All men are to worship me!”

Lucius laughed. “You are many things, lass. Perhaps an impudent child, but you are not a goddess.”

The room gasped, and Demetrius cleared his throat as if to warn Lucius that he should keep quiet and play along. Ganymedes held a finger to his lips as if to silence Lucius but the words were out and Arsinoe was now staring back at him, utterly speechless from the insult. At first, her eyes narrowed in an evil glare as if her next words would have him beheaded on the spot. But then Lucius saw her check herself. She had worked herself into a corner and she knew it. Obviously, she needed him for something, and so could not order him put to death, but she also had to save face for the sake of her followers in the room.

“Of course,” she said in a tone more amiable. “You Romans have your own gods, don’t you? You are not endowed with the ability to recognize the greater gods of Egypt.”

“Some believe in them. Some don’t. Some perform the rituals. Some pay them no mind.”

“And what do you believe, Roman?”

“I’ve been from one end of the world to the other. I’ve seen the so-called gods of a hundred different peoples demand more of them than they could give. I’ve seen men go to their graves for their gods, sacrifice their young, their virgins, the food from their tables.”

“I did not ask of other men, Roman. I asked what you believe.”

“I have seen too many things not to believe in a god. For all of its chaos, there is a balance to the universe, an order that cannot be explained, that cannot be seen, except from a heavenly eye. If there is a god, then there is only one, and he rules all. We mortals wander in and out of the balance that he sustains.”

Arsinoe glanced at Ganymedes as if to question his earlier assertion that Lucius was a fool. And then, a transformation took place. A poisonously teasing look appeared on Arsinoe’s face. She cast a glance at Demetrius, and then her lips curled and she began to walk around Lucius, running her manicured nails lightly across his muscled chest and back.

“You are taller than most Romans,” she said. “Maybe even taller than the great Caesar.”

“I am from Spain,” Lucius replied simply.

“And strong,” Arsinoe said in a low, almost animalistic tone while cupping her small hand around one of his triceps. “Why should a warrior of your skills be wasted serving Caesar and my fool of a sister? Why not join my ranks? I can place you at the head of a thousand soldiers tomorrow, if you wish. You can fight for my glory, and the glory of Egypt, not for that lost cause. You do wish to be on the winning side, do you not, Roman?”

“I have seen Caesar work his way out of more forbidding situations. I am not so sure you can defeat him?”

She looked suddenly irritated at the remark. “Demetrius, how many Romans did my army slay yesterday?”

“Near four hundred, Your Majesty.”

“There,” she said triumphantly, and then turned to the eunuch who appeared to be growing impatient with his monarch’s prating, “Ganymedes, tell this Roman what Caesar and his men are going to have to drink if they choose to remain in the palace.”

“But, Your Majesty, it is not important that this Roman should know – “

“Tell him!” she shouted with a vitriolic look.

“Uh, yes of course, Great One. We are diverting the city canals such that no fresh water will flow to the palace. In fact, we will soon be filling the palace cisterns with seawater. We expect that everyone in the palace will die of thirst by the end of the seventh day.”

“Ha!” she said proudly. “You see, Roman, a lost cause. Caesar and my sister are doomed, and so are all who are with them. If you serve me, on the other hand, you will enjoy the spoils of victory.” She paused, again the playful look at Demetrius, a raised eyebrow, and then her small hand reached out to touch Lucius’s chest ever so slightly. “And there are other rewards, too, Roman. Rewards that other men would beg for – yes, would crawl on their knees for.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Lucius saw that Demetrius was red-faced with a resentful countenance again, but the captain of the guard did his best to remain stoic with his eyes averted elsewhere.

“Er-uh, Great One,” Ganymedes finally cut-in. “Now that we have established this man’s,… well, his purity, is it not time for us to share with him the quest that lies before him.”

Arsinoe sighed. “If you insist.”

With a gesture from Ganymedes, Demetrius ordered everyone out of the courtyard. When the entourage had finally filed out, only Arsinoe, Ganymedes, Demetrius, and Khay remained with Lucius.

“There is an ancient treasure, Centurion,” Ganymedes began. “A symbol of Egyptian power and might, a symbol of the grace of the gods. It is called the Eye of Horus. It is a jeweled amulet once handed down by the pharaohs who ruled this land. It has been lost for nearly two millennia, hidden by the priests of Horus when great Egypt began to diminish and fade under the sands.”

“So, you want me to find this jewel for you?”

“It is not merely a jewel, heathen!” Khay suddenly said hotly, his voice amplified and made to sound imposing by some trickery of the falcon mask. “It has a power that you of the West could never understand. By the gods, Egypt was a flourishing empire when your pathetic Rome was but a deserted river valley. Our gods came before yours, even before those of the Greeks and the Atlanteans. We were a people blessed by the gods, and of the gods. A thousand kingdoms bore obeisance to our pharaohs, and many more trembled at the rumble of our chariot wheels.” The priest then outstretched his arms to the square of blue sky above the courtyard. “When great Osiris fell from his throne, his sons, Horus and Set, fought to take their father’s place. In the struggle, Set gouged out the eye of Horus, but the eye was recovered, and Horus offered it to his dead father in the hopes that Osiris would be brought back to life. He who holds the Eye of Horus has the power to heal the land, to bring Egypt back to her former glory, and to lead her people in conquest of the lands that have subjugated her for so long.”

“You see, Centurion,” said Ganymedes, in a tone not nearly as passionate as that of the priest. “It is what the people think that matters. The people of Egypt are torn between rulers that they believe are not of their own.”

“I understood that Ptolemy descended from the great Macedonian general,” Lucius said.

“Precisely, and that is why the Egyptians have never fully acknowledged the Macedonian dynasty as their true kings. They accept it, because for three hundred years it has largely brought peace. But now, they are tired of being ruled by others. They are tired of being subjugated. They cherish the legend of Horus and will follow whoever holds the Eye. Once the great Queen Arsinoe has shown her subjects that she and only she has the Eye of Horus, they will accept her as their own, and there will be one ruler in the land.”

“Don’t you mean two rulers?” Lucius said, eyeing the eunuch derisively.

“The factions will join together, and then, with a united front, we can defeat our enemies. The pretenders will be put to the sword, and a true dynasty will be established in Alexandria – one that will rule the world for all time.” Ganymedes said this last much more fervently, whether to distract the others from Lucius’s remark or from some other reason, Lucius could not tell. But he got the impression that the eunuch did not believe in what he was saying.

“If this bauble is lost,” Lucius said, flashing eyes at the incensed priest. “What makes you think I can find it? And why not have Demetrius here, or any one of your other knights, find it? Why me?”

“I’ll tell you the reason, knave!” Khay cut in with the booming artificial voice, the falcon eyes staring somewhere above Lucius’s shoulder. “Because the ancient priests of Horus knew that this day would come, that a great lady would arise and take power. They hid the Eye, but not where it could not be found. The location was passed down through the ages by my sect. Centuries ago, when the Macedonian rulers came to our land, the Horus priests carved a map into the wall of a shrine, far inland from here. This map shows the Eye’s location. Eventually, one of the Ptolemys suspected the priests of treason and had them put to death, and the shrine lay nearly forgotten for a hundred years.”

“But not completely forgotten,” Lucius said. “Then I suspect, priest, you know where this shrine is?”

The falcon head nodded.

“Then you have been to see the map.”

“No!” Khay shouted angrily, as if to suggest such was madness. “The prophecy and the curse forbid it, Horus help me!”

“What prophecy?”

“There were twelve priests tried for treason. They were betrayed to the king by both Macedonians and Egyptians, and thus the priests held both races to blame for their deaths. Just before they were skinned alive, the priests put a curse on the place, that no Macedonian or Egyptian blood may pass the threshold of the shrine. Furthermore, to ensure vengeance upon the races that had betrayed them, they declared that only one who had claimed the lives of twelve Macedonians and twelve Egyptians could enter the shrine.”

“And the curse?”

“That if one of such blood should enter, blessings would be heaped upon the enemies of Egypt and Macedon for a thousand years. That both kingdoms would see their last dynasty before the very same generation died out. That all of the gains of the Eye would turn to ten-fold losses. That all would be lost forever.”

“And I am the impure, pure-bred you need to enter the shrine for you?”

“Yes, Centurion,” Ganymedes said. “That is it, quite simply. We do not know what terrors lurk within the walls of that place, but you stand the best chance of succeeding.”

“And success will bring its own rewards, tall man,” Arsinoe said, with an alluring eye.

“And the gold? How much will I -”

“You dare talk of gold when your queen gives you an order, Roman!” Arsinoe snapped, her angry, pouty expression had returned. “Your reward is to serve my greatness!”

Again, Ganymedes calmed her. “Allow me to bear tribute to your greatness, O queen, by compensating this Roman from my own purse. Do not concern yourself with him any longer. I will reward him with two thousand Roman sesterces if he finds the map for us.”

Lucius’s eyes must have grown visibly at that moment, because Ganymedes smiled. The eunuch was offering what amounted to be a small fortune to a simple soldier.

“This Roman will find the map,” Ganymedes said, reassuringly, “and we will find the Eye.”

“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly, and Lucius caught a flash of desire in her eyes as they stared briefly at his bare chest. “When?”

“Tomorrow, my queen. The shrine is a half-day’s ride from here. From there, perhaps several more days of travel. We will not know for certain until we know the Eye’s location.”

“Excellent. Captain Demetrius, call my attendant to pack my things.”

Ganymedes quickly raised a hand. “Er-uh, such a journey is not worthy of such a great one, my queen. And may I remind you that your brother and sister still have agents in the city watching our every move. The fewer that know about this, the better.”

Arsinoe seemed much put out by this, and crossed her arms like a vexed school girl. “Who then, Ganymedes?”

“Demetrius, to keep an eye on the Roman. Khay, for any priestly contingencies that may be required. And I, to represent you, Great One. We will travel as merchants, in Bedouin attire.”

V

Lucius was given a room that was not unpleasant, with exotic furnishings only befitting an Egyptian princess’s house. His mail shirt and gladius had been cleaned, oiled and returned to him, and now lay draped across a stool in the corner. His helmet had not been returned, however, but that had not surprised him since they would be travelling incognito in the morning, and surely such a helmet would attract much attention on the streets of the city.

The window looked out over the city with its straight cut streets and checkerboard pattern. A full moon shone brightly above the dim city lights. He could just make out the palace, rising up near the harbor, with torches burning on the distant battlements. He had walked those battlements countless times over the past weeks, posting the men of his now dead century. The fires surrounding the palace were brighter than those in the rest of the city. They were the fires of Arsinoe’s army, laying siege to the palace and Caesar’s outnumbered forces.

Lucius found himself wondering if he would ever go back. The discipline of the legions was wearing thin on him. And what remained for him in Rome? Anarchy, rebellion, and a crumbling republic. He had heard of legionaries deserting to the east and making fortunes as mercenaries for the petty potentates there. There was no telling what he might become should he follow their example, perhaps even a king himself. There was no chance of that in the legions. Toil, discipline, and broken promises were all that the legions had ever offered him. Lucius then began to wonder what had happened to Caesar. He assumed the consul had made it off of the mole alive, otherwise Arsinoe and the others would have been gloating about it. Was it possible that Caesar was one of the hundreds of Roman bodies lying at the bottom of the harbor? And why did he care? What allegiance did he owe to Caesar, aside from the fact that he had marched for so long under the great man’s banner?

That night, the sounds of rolling engines and neighing horses rang out in the street below as more men filed into Alexandria to reinforce Arsinoe’s ranks. Lucius had just faded off to sleep when a distinct aroma began to touch his nostrils. It smelled sweet and noxious all at once, and he assumed it came from the street below where troops worked on some special mixture of pitch to hurl over the palace battlements. But then his mind began to swirl, and he found himself quite unable to move, yet completely conscious. If anything, his senses were more attuned now, but the vapor had rendered his arms and legs quite paralyzed and he could no longer feel his bandaged wounds. Shadows began moving in the darkened room. He saw the faces of girls, many girls, their lithe naked bodies dancing in and out of the shafts of moonlight. Then their hands were on him, dozens of small smooth hands, soothing his muscles and touching him everywhere at once. Whispers of long, scented hair brushed passed his face. The gentle nudge of young breasts caressed his forehead. He was surprised to discover that not all of him was paralyzed, and the gentle touches brought his carnal desires to a new height.

Then she was there, her large eyes gazing into his above a short veil that hid her nose and mouth. But aside from a spider-web thin strand of gold chain across her hips and a glimmering jewel in her navel, the veil was all she wore. Her hair thrashed and her body moved with the rhythm of an unheard drum, and with each beat of the drum his mind blurred with a cumulative intoxicating pleasure that he had never before experienced. A lifetime later, or maybe only heartbeats, he felt her fingernails dig into his chest muscles and a guttural moan exude from deep within her lungs. He lost himself in his own heightened senses and writhed with her until she went limp on top of him in a tangle of arms and legs.

He was still catching his breath when he felt the touch of her lips beside his ear.

“Do you think me a goddess now, Roman?”

Before he could answer, before he could think, one of the girls handed her a twig that was smoldering from one end. She waved this beneath his nose, forcing him to involuntarily suck in the wispy fumes. Her veil was now gone, and the moonlight afforded him a glimpse of her slightly upturned lips as he fell into a deep and contented sleep.

VI

The morning haze found four travelers aboard a skiff, thrusting its way from the city canal into Lake Mareotis. They crossed the large lake and moored at the south end where camels and provisions awaited them. They then took the road south. The road was really a dry earthen berm that cut across the vast marshes flooded by the cataracts of the Nile. The humid air and biting insects made the journey miserable, but they pressed on, stopping only to relieve themselves.

Still half in a stupor from the intoxicating potion that had been used on him last night, Lucius did his best to remain in the saddle. But as the sun climbed and the heat of the day set in, his senses came back to their full potency. It would have taken much convincing that the evening’s bliss had even happened at all. It seemed so much like a wild dream. But then, as they had loaded aboard the skiff that morning, dressed as Bedouins and covered in robes and turbans, he had taken out his gladius to keep it on his lap for the trip. When he had removed the pointed weapon from its sheath, a wispy piece of golden cloth came out with it, floating to the deck at his feet. The sheer material was connected on two corners by a strand of fine gold, and Lucius instantly recognized it. It was the veil Arsinoe had worn the night before.

“You had a visitor last night,” Demetrius had said neutrally, evidently recognizing it, too. The captain of the guard did not seem overly surprised by it, and his deportment was one of acceptance.

“Aye,” answered Lucius. “I am uncertain about what hap-“

“Say no more, Centurion,” the captain interrupted, appearing not to be interested.

But Lucius was curious, and so pressed the issue. “Your queen must have known that you would see this today.” He said holding the veil before him.

“She certainly did,” Demetrius said, looking out at the still lake. “You are very observant.”

“So, there has been something between you?”

“I have served her since I was a boy, and she a mere girl. I am the son of court nobles, so I was often called to the palace to serve as a playmate to the king’s children.”

“But to Arsinoe, you were more than just a playmate?”

Demetrius’s face saddened. “Yes, much more. As children, we were inseparable, or at least I could never get enough of her. As we grew older, she was distracted by the dozens of suitors and temptations placed before all princesses. Her interests changed. She took on the voracious desires that consume all royal youth – survival and power. But my love for her only matured. It only grew stronger.” Demetrius then chuckled. “My success in the guards was driven purely by the longing to impress her, to please her, to be worthy of her. I even had it in my head that I could be the one to marry her someday. I followed her around like a pet.”

“And now, you still do,” Lucius said.

Demetrius shot him a look of ire. “I am the captain of the royal guard, Centurion. I live to serve the rulers of Egypt. No matter who is on the throne.” Then he smiled. “But, you are right. The queen knows how much I yearn for her, how much I love her. She sees it merely as the misguided cravings of a naive school boy, and she treats our childhood memories as toys to torment me with. And whenever a new lover, like you, comes along, she torments me by overtly exhibiting her passion for him. She knows what it does to me, and she seems to take great pleasure in it.”

“Perhaps you should move on,” offered Lucius.

Demetrius shook his head, “Have you ever been enchanted by a woman? Have you ever been willingly enslaved such that you can do nothing, think nothing, without her coming to the forefront of your thoughts? I love her, Centurion. I have always loved her. I cannot explain what force drives me to such folly, except maybe the need to protect her.”

“From what?”

“From her siblings. From her people. From herself. And from them.” He gestured to the eunuch and the priest sitting on the other end of the skiff, well out of earshot. Ganymedes took far too many sips from his waterskin and patted his perspiring forehead. Khay no longer wore the falcon mask. A black turban now covered his head and face, leaving only a small slit for those intense, judging eyes that all priests seemed to have.

“Those vultures will tear her apart someday,” Demetrius said. “Someday, when she is secure in her throne. I think she knows this, but I cannot be certain. She indulges them so much.”

The road above the marsh was not perfect, and from time to time it dipped into the shallow water forcing the camels to wade through the stagnant putrid liquid, stirring up a swarm of mosquitoes with every step. The priest led the way, evidently the only one who had been to this long lost shrine. Scanning the hazy horizon as far as his eyes would allow, Lucius could see nothing but swamp and low brush. It surprised him, then, when Khay steered his own camel away from the road and down into the marsh. He beckoned for the others to follow.

“Down there? Are you sure?” Ganymedes asked skeptically, his face now swollen red from insect bites. “How can you be certain?”

“This is the way,” Khay said simply, and then coaxed his mount on into the shallow muddy water. His voice was not nearly as imposing without the amplification of the mask. He still turned from time to time to stare at Lucius, as if he was uncomfortable with the idea of the Roman riding behind him.

When they had reached a point well away from the road, such that the road could scarcely be seen beyond the long path of churning mud left by their mounts, Khay began to steer toward a clump of brush much larger than the others. As they drew closer, a bright structure with a rounded dome could be seen rising out of the reeds. From a distance it would have been dismissed as a mound of dry land, and Lucius now understood why the structure had remained a secret for so long. Pushing the tall reeds aside, they rode onto a wide stone staircase that was half-submerged in the murky water. At the top of the staircase they came to an open gate in a rundown stone wall. There they dismounted, and Lucius got his first good look at the structure within.

The shrine was immense, at least two stories high, and standing inside a partially flooded courtyard that was surrounded by a wall as high as two men, though the wall had crumbled in several places where the erosion of the ages had taken its toll. A century of ebbs and floods of the Nile had not left the shrine untouched either. At one time, the structure must have been a small wonder to those who frequented it, but now it sat tilted on its foundation. It was slowly sliding into the mud and would someday be lost forever, like so many other constructions of the ancients.

Demetrius took a step toward the open gate that led into the courtyard, but Khay outstretched a bony hand to stop him.

“No!” snapped the priest. “Only the Roman and I go on from here. No one else may come.”

“But why are you to go, Khay?” asked Demetrius. “The curse says no Egyptian can go inside the shrine.”

“I do not intend to go inside,” Khay said irritably. “I will wait just outside the threshold. In the event that this Roman finds some inscriptions he cannot read, he can call them out to me.”

Demetrius seemed to accept this answer. Ganymedes appeared to care little, and was already sitting in the shade of a crumbling column, fanning his face and slapping at mosquitoes.

Lucius checked the pouch they had given him containing the papyrus and ink that he would use to reproduce the map, should he find it. He also checked his torch and finally his gladius to make sure it was there. He had no idea what he might face inside – anything from crocodiles to evil curses. Either way, he was only steps away from earning the promised gold, and that spurred him onward.

“Lead on, priest,” he said.

Khay looked back at him briefly, and then entered the courtyard, with Lucius close behind. The courtyard was not the kind that one might play ball in. It was covered with large stone monuments and steles bearing inscriptions of all kinds. Lucius could only guess what might be buried beneath them, but he had to keep up with the suddenly nimble priest who jumped from one dry patch of land to another, like a frog crossing a pond. They finally reached the tilted, entrance to the shrine. Inscriptions, now weathered and fading, had been carved into the stone periphery of the doorway. Lucius could not read them, but he assumed they portended doom to all who entered the off-kilter structure. A few paces beyond the doorway there was nothing but blackness, a dark void with flies buzzing in and out of the unseen space.

“In there?” Lucius asked the priest.

“Yes. You must go in there.”

Striking a flint against one of the stone walls, Lucius puffed his torch to life, and then unsheathed his sword. He looked again at the foreboding entrance. There was no way of knowing how far he would have to go. The map could be anywhere.

“Any words of counsel?” he asked.

Khay looked somewhat surprised at the question, but then surprised Lucius back with his brimming answer.

“You will no doubt encounter several snares, Roman. The priests of Horus knew how to protect their secrets well. Never let your guard down, even for an instant. Oftentimes, escape from one trap leads directly into another. By my estimation, the map room will be deep in the rear of the shrine, far down that passage.”

“My thanks, priest. Anything else?”

The intense eyes suddenly appeared hesitant before Khay added. “Just this. These shrines are often sought out by thieves, bent on finding treasure. Do not be disturbed if you find the remains of …others…who went before you.”

As Lucius ducked into the doorway, his torch held before him, he wondered why the Khay had bothered to mention that. He truly doubted that the priest was in any way concerned for his peace of mind, let alone for his safety. Perhaps Khay thought the warning might improve Lucius’s chances of succeeding. Lucius let his mind be satisfied with that explanation.

Once Lucius was through the door, the passage took a series of jagged turns. It was remarkable how the outside light was suddenly and completely swallowed up, even to the point where the torch seemed to afford little light. The pitch blackness through which he now groped smelled of putrescence and mildew. As stalwart a warrior as Lucius was, even he was forced to cover his mouth and nose with the skirt of his turban to avoid breathing in the foul air. Holding his gladius ahead of him, he proceeded cautiously, stepping once, and then stopping to look and listen. He repeated this over and over again until he came to a long, straight passage where the darkness finally abated. The passage was lit by glowing beams of sunlight emanating from large square holes in the ceiling, but these were not skylights as he had originally thought. It was dull, indirect light. Whether the outside world was but a single turn of the shaft above, or the light had been piped through a series of mirrored shafts from far away, he could not tell. He guessed the latter, judging from the putrid odor that hung in the air like a heavy blanket, and the fact that the flame in his torch was so starved of air that it was barely the size of a candle now.

The passage before him appeared harmless enough. It led on for fifty paces or more, with shafts of light illuminating the corridor at even intervals. The space between the intervals was pitch black, but judging from the emptiness of the illuminated spaces there appeared to be no dangers here. That fact alone made him sharpen his senses. He withdrew the fabric from his mouth that he might smell any danger, if necessary. Then he began to move slowly, creeping toward the first dark space. He slowed considerably, checking every place he put his feet, forcing his eyes to adjust from the brightness of the beam he had just passed through. But there was nothing there, and he was through to the next shaft of light. Again, he approached the darkness with trepidation. But again, the passage in the dark space was no different than it had been in the light. He breathed easier, and cursed himself for being too cautious. The priest’s words had set an anxiety in him, and he now wished the bastard had said nothing at all. But just as he was about to casually step out of the light and into the next area of darkness, the priest’s words resounded in his head.

Never let your guard down, even for an instant.

Lucius stopped abruptly, catching himself before placing one foot in the dark space. Instead of stepping into the dark section of the passage, he crouched low and advanced cautiously, holding the scant light of the torch in one hand while he prodded the floor ahead with the sword. And then just inside the escarpment of dark shadow, his probing sword suddenly met with no resistance at all. It was stabbing at a black void. He strained his eyes to discover that the floor disappeared just where the edge of the dark shadow started. There was no telling how deep the pit was or how far he would have to jump to clear the chasm. He had to assume the pit encompassed the entire dark section of passage, and if that were the case, there was no way he could make that leap. No less than ten paces separated him from the next shaft of light farther down the passage. At least he could see that the floor there was as intact as the one on which he now stood. But how could he get there?

He tore a small piece of wool from the hem of his robe and coaxed the torch flame onto it. Then he tossed the flaming material into the blackness, fully expecting it to fall out of sight. He was surprised when it came to rest only a few feet down, and he certainly had not expected to see what the flame now revealed. Glimmering, three-foot spikes covered the floor of the pit, each one bearing a point that looked sharp enough to draw blood at the touch. But that was not all. Impaled upon five or six of these deadly spikes were the decaying remains of three men.

After first dismissing the grisly bodies as mere thieves like the ones Khay had warned him about, Lucius realized that there was something odd about these corpses. Looking past them, at the floor of the pit, he could see a scattering of human bones. There were enough to have once comprised one or two human skeletons at the most, as one might expect to find inside a shrine that had lain hidden for a century, only occasionally discovered by an overly curious traveler. The bodies of the three men on the pikes, however, were relatively fresh, appearing to have only been dead for a few weeks at the most. What’s more, they each wore black tunics of similar make, the same kind Lucius had seen worn by many of the religious acolytes in Alexandria.

While studying the bodies, Lucius discovered the way past the pit. A narrow ledge no wider than a hand’s breadth, projected from one wall affording a small foothold that the dexterous could nudge along while clutching the wall for support. Of course, the ancient priests of Horus would have needed a way to get safely past their own trap, and this ledge must have been it. With the agility of a velite, Lucius moved out onto the narrow space, and quickly made it across. He had spent enough time in his career balancing on the rails of a galley about to collide with an enemy vessel, that he had little problem negotiating the path, even with his torch in one hand.

Once past the pit, he approached the next dark section of the corridor with caution, but to his relief, it hid nothing but the solid stones of the passage floor. And he soon discovered this to be the case for the remaining dark areas in the corridor.

At the end of the hall, he came to an open portal. Peering inside, the torchlight revealed what appeared to be a great round room. A small glow of light emanated from an arched doorway on the opposite side. It appeared to be natural light, and it had the effect of luring one to move toward it, as if the outside world lay just beyond. But Lucius was still smarting from his encounter with the spike pit and was now on the lookout for such things. Directing the torch low, near his ankles, he once again could see that he was faced with some kind of open pit, for the room had no floor. Again, he tore off a bit of wool, lit it, and tossed it into the dark hole. As the burning fibers descended he could see that he stood on the precipice of a circular shaft encompassing the entire chamber, nearly twenty paces across. Not only was it much wider than the last, it was much deeper. He watched the tiny flame float down and farther down the shaft until it was nothing more than a flicker and was finally swallowed up by the blackness. Out of curiosity, Lucius grabbed a crumbled piece of brick on the floor and tossed it into the pit. He counted to fourteen before any echo of an impact made its way to his ear. It had sounded like a splash. There was no telling what vast underground lake this tube led to, nor how many unwary thieves had met their ends in this fashion, but one thing was certain – anything that fell into this pit would never again see the light of day.

Lucius was wondering how he might get across it when he discovered that two ropes had already been provided for this. Like the strings of a lyre, the cords had been stretched tightly across the mouth of the chasm. One end of each rope was securely fastened to a great stone brick on Lucius’s side. The massive brick had probably fallen out of the ceiling decades before, and had evidently been chosen as an anchor for the ropes because of its size. It looked as though it weighed as much as a newborn elephant and certainly would not budge. The other ends of the ropes were attached to the opposite side by two grappling hooks that Lucius could only make out if he held the torch just right. He ran his fingers along the ropes and was further surprised. They were not old and frayed from years of decay, but newly stranded. Someone had been here before him, and somewhat recently. Perhaps the three dead men impaled in the passage had companions that had pressed on and made it this far. If so, Lucius could only assume that the map had already been discovered and the bandits were now far away. If they had already discovered the hidden location of the jewel, Lucius’s whole purpose for being here was now nullified.

But, he could not turn back now.

There was no reason for him not to trust the ropes, and he did not have any other means of crossing the gulch. He sheathed his sword and perched the torch in a holder on the wall, for he would have no means of carrying it from this point onward. After testing one of the ropes with nearly his whole weight, he stretched out under it and propelled himself along with hands and feet, like a worm upon a branch. As he passed over the center of the pit, he felt a chilling wind wafting up from the darkness below, like the exhale of a sleeping giant. But he did not look down.

Once on the other side, he crouched in the arched doorway and paused. The dull light inside was created by a series of holes in the high stone ceiling, similar to those he had encountered in the corridor. Most of the room was dark, but there was enough light for him to make out its general size and shape. It was circular, with a large open area just inside the door, obstructed only by a few shadowy objects on the floor. Farther inside, a series of shoulder-high pedestals formed a narrow lane leading up to a tapered brick altar. It was here that most of the light was directed. Many of the pedestals were topped with falcon-faced masks, similar to the one Khay had worn in the queen’s house, and just as sinister looking. A few masks lay on the floor, thrown there either by disinterested thieves or the settling of the shrine’s foundation over the centuries. The altar at the end of the lane of pedestals was taller than a man and held a circular metallic object which appeared to be an ornate shield in the old Egyptian fashion. Remarkably, it still managed to reflect light through the layer of silt adorning its face. Beyond the altar, a high wall encrusted with jewels and hieroglyphics stretched from floor to ceiling. There appeared to be no other passage leading off from this chamber, and Lucius suspected that he had found the shrine’s inner sanctum.

So, this was it, Lucius thought. This had to be the room containing the map. But one thing puzzled him. If other thieves had made it this far into the shrine – presumably the thieves that had left the ropes – why had they not stripped the room bare? Why had they left the shield atop the altar and the fortune’s worth of jewels adorning the wall? Even the falcon masks would fetch something in Alexandria’s markets.

But as Lucius’s eyes grew further accustomed to the dim lighting, and the shadowy portion of the room just beyond the door, he suddenly realized what the dark clumps were that he had seen on the floor. His eyes had not registered them at first because they defied the mind’s instinctive logic. There were four clumps on the floor, but now Lucius realized with horror that he was looking at two men – two men that had been cleaved in twain at the waist with torsos and twisted legs flung several paces apart. The remains of these thieves appeared to be in the same early state of decomposition as the men in the pit, and they wore the same black guise of acolytes.

Now Lucius fully understood why the treasures had not been touched. None of his predecessors had made it out of this place alive. He also understood that, no matter how quiet and serene that chamber appeared now, some kind of savage death awaited him just beyond the threshold.

He thought for a moment, peering into the doorway, arching his head to try and see if any danger lay in waiting just out of sight, but the stone-brick door frame extended slightly into the room such that he could not see beyond it without putting his head fully inside the room. At that moment, he thought he heard something behind him, in the passage on the other side of the chasm, as if someone – or something – had stepped on a crumbling brick. He waited and listened intently, but did not hear it again, and dismissed it as one of the bats he had seen fluttering about the ceiling.

Turning his attention to the chamber before him, he resolved to go inside the room and face whatever danger awaited him there. He had come to Egypt for gold, either that promised by Caesar or that he could make on his own, and here it was, before his eyes. He no longer cared if he found the map. Arsinoe, Ganymedes, and even Caesar, for that matter, could go to Hades and be damned. If he could make it to that beautiful, twinkling far wall, and pry loose a few of the jewels embedded there, his own quest would be fulfilled. Even a small bag-full of those rare gems would be enough for him to retire on.

Crouching low with sword in hand, Lucius crept past the arched threshold and into the chamber. As he picked his way across the open area, he tried not to focus on the bodies on the floor but to keep a vigilant eye out for what had killed them. He could not help but notice that both men had been torn apart in exactly the same way. Both pairs of legs lay on the path in front of him and both torsos lay off to the right, as if flung there. The realization that both men had died at the same moment, after taking the same fatal step, did not occur to him until a moment too late, when he stepped on a blood-spattered stone brick near the dead men’s feet. The brick gave way beneath his hob-nailed boot, sinking a hand’s breadth into the floor and starting a great clamorous thunder of vibrations that ran through the floor and spread to the walls behind him. He turned to see that a great rectangular stone had come down from the ceiling and now blocked the doorway and his only escape route. An instant later, he heard a great snap as that of a giant ballista chord being released. A quick thought came to him – that if the torsos had been flung to the right, the danger was coming from the left. He spun around just in time to see a long glimmer of light emerging from the shadows on the left side of the room at lightning speed. In the briefest of glimpses, he saw a giant scythe-like curved blade, as long as two men standing on end, coming at him. Lucius’s speed and agility were the only things that could save him now. He moved with a swiftness that could only be attained from a lifetime spent dodging the arrows and javelins of Rome’s enemies. Instantly dropping to the floor, he escaped certain vivisection, but he did not avoid the giant blade altogether. The slicing, twelve-foot-long scythe tore the turban from his head, taking a few pieces of scalp with it. He pressed his belly harder into the stone floor, not daring to rise, somehow sensing that the danger was not over. He soon found that his instincts were correct. A rush of air brushed past his neck as the backstroke swing of the deadly blade passed a finger’s width above him. A great scraping sound then filled the room, and again tremors ran through the wall and floor as the great killing machine withdrew into the shadows.

And then, all was as silent as before.

Not daring to move, Lucius collected his bearings and surveyed the room from his new vantage point. The great stone that had blocked the entrance was now gone. Presumably it had been withdrawn back inside the great dark hole in the ceiling that Lucius only now noticed while looking up from his prostrate position. Along one side of the room stretched a long, dark slit, or cavity. No doubt the giant sword, or whatever it was, had come from there. The blood-stained stone that Lucius had stepped on to start the whole terrifying sequence had now risen back to its former height. Whatever engineering the old Alexandrians had devised to drive this devilish contraption, Lucius surmised that it had just reset itself and now lay ready for its next victim.

Certainly, other bricks in the floor might activate the device, aside from the one he had just stepped on, and he had no way of knowing how far the lengthy blade extended into the room whenever it made its deadly journey. Then he remembered something. The old priests of Horus had left themselves a means of getting past the spiked pit in the passage. Surely, they would have afforded a means of getting past the blade. This room appeared to have been used for rituals, and had most likely been full of priests on many occasions. While a twelve-foot mechanical blade vivisecting a dozen priests in the blink of an eye made for one damn impressive sacrifice, Lucius suspected that was not what the priests had in mind. There had to be a way to disable it.

Lucius looked around the room for something simple, and he found it just inside the doorway. A large metallic rod stood out from the wall at an angle, out of sight or reach to anyone outside the room. Lucius inched his way over to the lever, being careful to step only on the stone bricks he had safely stepped on before. He had to use his full weight and strength to pull the lever downward, but it eventually moved, and he heard some mechanical vibrations running through the wall and the floor which he could only conclude was some type of safety mechanism.

Of course, there was only one way to know for sure. He crouched low, and pushed on the blood-stained stone brick. This time, it did not budge, and Lucius breathed a sigh of relief. Proceeding with a wary eye out for any other lurking snares, he walked forward through the lane of masks and approached the altar. Now, he was close enough to better see the shield that sat upon it. Constructed more for the throne room than for the battlefield, the round object appeared to be made of bronze, and was lavishly modeled with inlaid swirls of gold. At first, Lucius dismissed it as too cumbersome of a prize to haul away. He was about to turn his attention to the jeweled wall when he noticed that the seemingly random swirls on the shield had an order to them. He carefully removed the shield from its pedestal, fully expecting it to set off some deadly device. He was relieved when nothing happened. Moving into a shaft of light, he wiped off the dust covering the shield’s face and then studied it. A single streak of gold ran down the length of the shield in one congruous meandering line. As the line neared the edge of the shield, it blossomed into several individual streaks. Within this jumble of lines was a bright, red ruby, the placement of which relative to the gold lines seemed to lend to some significance. Lucius suddenly realized that he had seen these markings before – or more precisely – he had seen similar markings in a different form.

Back in Alexandria, during the many councils of war coordinating the defense of the palace, Lucius had stood with the other Roman officers as they consulted a myriad maps supplied by Cleopatra. He knew how to read them and, whenever they were available, always took care to get quickly acquainted with any new place that the legions took him. This gold band on the shield with its blossoming lines represented the Nile, and the red ruby, Alexandria. He was certain of it. There were hieroglyphs on the shield, which he could not read, but there were also Greek inscriptions, which he could. They gave distances between a series of graphically portrayed landmarks that wound down the map and finally ended in the center of the shield where a large eye had been drawn in gold. The eye looked like that of a painted Egyptian girl, with a long, thin eyebrow above the eye, a line trailing off from the outer corner of the eye, another line ending in a spiral, and a final line resembling a teardrop drawn just beneath the inner corner of the eye. Lucius assumed this to be a representation of the Eye of Horus. There were several prominent landmarks portrayed around the eye – three small mountains of equal height, with a fourth mountain distinctly higher than the other three.

This was undoubtedly the map he had been sent to inscribe on the papyrus in his pouch. But there would be no need to copy the map now. Evidently, Ganymedes, Demetrius, and Khay had not realized that the map would be inscribed on a shield which he could carry out without difficulty.

But before he did that, there was the matter of the jewels on the wall. He eyed the fortune before him, deciding which of the jewels would be the easiest to carry inconspicuously while fetching the best price.

As Lucius’s eyes had finally settled on a particularly large set of red rubies, a noise sounded in the chamber behind him. Wheeling around with his sword drawn, he could see no one, but he suddenly felt a small prick on his sword arm. Looking down, he saw a feathered dart lodged in his bicep. He quickly plucked it out and dove behind the altar, understanding that whoever had fired the dart had the advantage. As he crouched there, waiting for his attacker to make the next move, he began to feel light-headed. His hand opened involuntarily, dropping the gladius to clang upon the stone floor. Lucius tried to pick it up, but his arm had gone completely numb and he could not move it. Glancing at the dart on the floor, Lucius saw that it was too small to have come from a bow. It was the kind often used with a blow tube and often tipped with poison. Instantly he put his mouth to the wound and began to suck and spit out as much blood as he could manage, but the numbness began to spread, and he found himself fighting to remain balanced.

“You should be feeling the effects of the poison now, Roman!” a voice boomed from the other side of the room. It was Khay’s voice, and it was amplified as it had been when he wore the mask in Arsinoe’s courtyard. “I have tested it on dozens of slaves and prisoners and have found it to be very effective. It causes complete paralysis within a few moments. The more you move, the more swiftly it works.”

“The curse is upon you now, priest!” Lucius shouted back, trying desperately to keep a clear head. “You have crossed the threshold!”

“Curse?” Khay laughed hysterically. “There is no curse, you dimwitted fool. I concocted that story to keep those other two idiots out.”

Lucius tried to remain steady, though his body was wracked with a tingling sensation that left him shaking all over. He had to keep talking. He had to keep the priest talking. “Then why use me?”

“Is it not obvious? No, maybe not to a daft Roman.” The priest’s voice seemed to be coming from a different part of the chamber now. Either Khay was moving around, or the creeping poison was affecting Lucius’s hearing. “You, no doubt, encountered the bodies of my unfortunate acolytes. They and I came here a fortnight ago, knowing full well the shrine would be laced with many traps. I used my acolytes to find them. But they could not get past the final snare – the snare in this chamber. Two of them entered, and two of them died. The doorway was always blocked whenever the snare activated so I could never see what killed them. I did not bring enough acolytes, you see. I had fully intended to return the next day with another dozen, but then the thought occurred to me, perhaps a warrior with quick reflexes might succeed where my bumbling servants had failed. I decided to tell the queen about this place and to ply her with promises of the great heights she would attain should she be the one to find the Eye. Then I invented the curse. I did it to serve two purposes. To keep her people out, and to force them to produce a warrior for me. This they did. And, alas, I was right. You have succeeded.”

Lucius could tell the voice was drawing closer, and he fought to stay alert. “And the Eye of Horus?”

“Oh, it exists. The curse may be a lie, but the Eye is quite real. And whoever bears it will be the rightful ruler of all Egypt. That is assured. But I have been chosen by the gods for that honor, not that half-breed who calls herself queen! I, and I alone, will possess the Eye. Egypt will rise out of the ashes under my rule, and all kingdoms shall bow before it. Those who do not, will be swept away by my omnipotent hand, including that pathetic city you bear allegiance to.”

To Lucius’s right, a falcon mask suddenly appeared around the corner of the altar. The narrow eyes peered scornfully at him and looked much more terrifying under the effects of the poison. Lucius did not move, doing his best to pretend that total paralysis had overtaken him. He had seen the effects of other poisons before and did his best to emulate the jittery eyes he had seen in other victims. He was still clutching the shield, and he still had use of his left arm – at least, he thought he did. He could not be certain of anything in the jumble that his mind had become, but for some reason the poison had not had the total effect on him that the priest had expected. Perhaps the remnant of whatever Arsinoe had made him inhale the night before was having some kind of counter-active effect.

“Can you speak, Roman?” Khay asked amusedly. “I didn’t think so. But I know you can hear me. You see, although the poison causes paralysis of the limbs, it allows the victim to remain fully conscious. A most intriguing convenience, wouldn’t you say?”

Lucius felt that he could speak if he tried, but he kept his mouth shut, hoping the priest would think him immobilized. His eyes began to cloud as he saw Khay cautiously turn the corner of the altar and approach him. As the priest stood over him, holding the blow tube in one hand and a long ceremonial dagger in the other, a devilish smile formed beneath the falcon mask.

“They say, Roman, those who were sacrificed here were blessed by the gods, that their souls live forever in the underworld, and that those they left behind enjoyed good fortune for generations after. Whether it is true or just a myth, you will soon know. Consider this only just compensation for laying your foul hands on me in Arsinoe’s house yesterday. You nearly choked the life out of me. Now, you will witness every movement of my blade as I slice open your chest and remove your beating heart.”

Khay stooped down and began to pull open Lucius’s robe to unlace the mail shirt. But before Khay could get to the armor, Lucius brought his left arm around to smash the bronze shield into the side of the priest’s head. The staggering blow shattered the mask and knocked the priest off his feet. Then, while the dazed Khay groped for his dropped dagger, Lucius snatched up the spent dart and drove it into the priest’s exposed calf as far as it would go.

Khay screamed in pain, struggling to crawl away. Lucius strained every one of his weakened muscles to keep hold of the priest, driving the dart into his leg several more times before he slipped away. Khay rose, clutching his bleeding leg, and quickly took up his dagger. His face, no longer hidden by the mask, was now clearly visible in the dim light, and Lucius could see that it was anything but imposing. The priest had a hooked nose, gaunt cheeks, and a weak, sunken chin. The crooked lips, now twisted in agony from the wound in his leg, drooped on one side, indicating a past illness of some kind.

“How?” Khay said in shock and anger. “The poison should have immobilized you.”

“You would have done better to test your foul mixtures on warriors, dog!” Lucius said, holding up the dart, and then tossing it away. “Half-starved slaves make poor subjects for your experiments.”

A look of terror came over the priest as he realized that he had been stabbed with his own dart.

“No, no, no,” Khay said again and again as he desperately clawed at his leg, examining the wounds.

Khay was hysterical now. He dropped the dagger and began to fumble with his robes, but it was obvious that the poison was taking its toll on him. His hands moved like clubs, and he seemed to have little control over his fingers. He managed to remove a small object from a fold in his robes. It appeared to be a vial of some sort, and the priest struggled to hold onto it in his drug-induced state. Fumbling the thin ampoule between his immobile fingers, he eventually lost his grip on it, and it fell to the floor. Khay then fell to his knees, but could not manage to snatch up the vial with his useless hands.

Lucius suddenly realized that the vial must contain some kind of antidote. In less than a heartbeat, Lucius had thrown his own lumbering form at Khay, using every last scrap of energy to shove the priest away from the vial. Khay fell onto his back, and though he struggled briefly, he did not rise again. The multiple stabs of the dart had injected him with a much higher dosage. The poison had worked its sinister magic swiftly, and now the priest was paralyzed from head to foot. As Khay himself had described, the potion did not deprive him of consciousness, as evident by the jittery eyes following Lucius’s every move.

Lucius now took up the vial, broke the seal, and poured its contents down his own throat while the priest watched in utter hopelessness. Within moments Lucius began to feel a change, as if his body suddenly underwent a complete reversal. The degradation had stopped, and now a sensation of healing burned from within his very core. He was still devastatingly weak, but he could crawl – and crawl was all he needed to do at the moment.

Lucius took up the dagger in one hand and dragged himself over to Khay’s still form. The dagger was no more than a sewing needle compared to some swords he had handled, but in his current state it felt as though it weighed as much as ten bricks. He placed the blade against Khay’s throat and stared into the priest’s twitching eyes.

“No,” Lucius snarled. “You will not die so easily.”

Throwing the dagger away, Lucius took several moments to catch his breath, all the while Khay’s wild eyes stared at him in bewilderment. Then, using every bit of his returning strength, Lucius began to drag himself and the priest toward the doorway. It was slow and painstaking work, but Lucius was determined. Every inch closer to the door brought a new level of terror to Khay’s eyes as he began to comprehend the fate that awaited him. When they had finally passed through the door, Lucius positioned the priest’s body on the precipice of the gaping pit beyond. Khay’s eyes were now silently screaming with a look of rage and horror.

“Go tell Horus to kiss my Roman arse!” Lucius cried, bracing himself against the wall and kicking Khay’s body with all of the strength he could muster.

With wild eyes twitching, the priest slowly rolled over the edge and fell into the unseen depths of the dark shaft.

Fourteen heartbeats later, a dull splash echoed up from the blackness.

VII

“There it is!” Ganymedes exclaimed, pointing up ahead. “You were right, Roman! You were right! The gods bless you!”

After ten days of travel, ten days of swaying atop meandering camels, ten days of fighting wind, sand, heat and the indomitable sun, the three weary travelers had finally arrived at their destination. Having reached yet another crest in the seemingly endless sea of dunes, the three sand-beaten men and their camels now stared gratefully at a cluster of four mountains before them. Like the knuckles of a giant fist, the steep slopes rose out of the desert floor, their majestic red peaks brilliant in the late afternoon sun. One peak towered high above the rest, just as Lucius had seen on the shield inscription. Most welcoming of all, a belt of green vegetation, a color nearly forgotten by the three men, enshrouded the base of the mountains where palm trees swayed and swarms of birds took to the air.

There was life there. And where there was life, there was water.

“Four peaks.” Demetrius smiled. “Just as you said, Centurion. I suppose there is no doubting your memory. Incredible!”

As the three spurred their mounts forward into the longed-for shadows of the great peaks, Lucius could hardly believe it himself. Even he had begun to doubt the existence of the Eye of Horus, through the days of endless dunes and sun, guiding his companions across the empty desert without the aid of a map, using only the landmarks and directions he had memorized from the inscriptions on the shield. It now appeared that Khay had told the truth about at least one thing. The amulet must exist.

It had taken no small bit of work all those days ago, sitting on the steps of the shrine, to convince Ganymedes and Demetrius to trust in his memory and head out across the desert with him, but they had really had no choice in the matter. Lucius had seen to that.

After his struggle with the priest, Lucius had remained in shrine for hours, drinking as much as he could from his waterskin. He had carefully considered his options before re-emerging to face Ganymedes and Demetrius waiting outside. From everything Khay had said, the two had not known of the priest’s treachery, and in fact had been deceived themselves. But Lucius could not take that risk. It would be days before the poison was completely out of his system and he could defend himself physically. Once Ganymedes and Demetrius had their hands on the shield with the map, his value to them might sour quickly. So, Lucius had decided to make himself valuable to them. He memorized every line, every marker, and every Greek inscription on the shield. He had recited them over and over again, until his poison-affected mind throbbed from the concentration. Once he felt comfortable that he would not forget any of it, he tossed the shield into the abyss where the priest had fallen to his death. When he had finally emerged from the shrine, and had informed his anxious companions what had happened and what he had done with the shield, they had been disappointed, to say the least. But, they had seemed to eventually accept the fact that Lucius was the only one who now knew the location of the Eye of Horus. Over the ten scorching days of travel, they had followed him, through sandstorms and unmerciful heat. Ganymedes’s patience had begun to wear thin, but, surprisingly, Demetrius’s had not. He seemed to have some measure of trust in Lucius, that Lucius himself was not certain was warranted.

Now, that trust had been rewarded as they drove their camels into the lee of the great mountains’ shadows.

Beneath the palms in the small valley between the mountains, they found a spring, teeming with different kinds of fowl and flying insects. It was fed by a spring gushing from an overhanging cliff, one hundred feet above them. The cool, spring water cascaded down the mountain face deflecting off of an assortment of jagged rocks until it finally splashed into a large pond at the base. The travelers and their mounts could not help but bury their faces in the cool liquid and wash away the layers of grit and grime. There was no trace that any human had been to the pond in years, if not centuries – no camel tracks, no fire pits, nothing. But that was to be expected since the nearest caravan route was days away.

Still, there was something unsettling about the place. It was not anything Lucius could express in words. It was more of a feeling than anything else, the culmination of a dozen seemingly trivial things that could only be sensed by those who had spent a lifetime in enemy countries where an ambush might lurk behind every bend. More than once, Lucius and Demetrius clutched the hilts of their swords at a movement of the reeds that did not seem to coincide with any wind or a swarm of birds suddenly taking to flight for no apparent reason.

The three men spent several hours resting in the shade, slowly restoring their hydration. Demetrius’s bow brought down a fowl which they roasted and devoured, filling their starving bellies with fresh meat for the first time in many days.

As the evening came on, and the small cooking fire began to dwindle, Demetrius faded off to sleep. Ganymedes, on the other hand, seemed restless. He studied the dark cliffs high above them, now a mass of shadows in the moonlight.

“Perhaps it is up there, Roman,” Ganymedes postulated. “Atop that tall peak. It is in a cave, you say?”

Lucius nodded. “That is what the map indicated.”

“It would take a nimble man indeed to make his way up that mountain.” The eunuch smiled, again appearing somewhat nervous. “Good thing we brought you along, eh.”

“We shall know in the morning,” Lucius said simply, leaning his head back on his bedroll.

Then, quite mysteriously, the eunuch rose from his own bedroll and moved over to where Lucius lay, all the while glancing back at the sleeping Demetrius, as if to ensure that the Egyptian captain was asleep.

“Why not fetch it for me now, Centurion?” Ganymedes whispered. “I know you know more than you let on. Do what I ask, and I’ll double what I promised to pay you. You have nothing to fear from me. I am not a warrior like yourself or Demetrius there. You could kill me whenever you wish. I know this. That is why you can trust me.”

“You would betray Demetrius?” Lucius asked.

“You are a wise man, Centurion. Khay took you for a dumb brute, and he paid the price for it. I will not make the same mistake. Demetrius blindly follows his dear Arsinoe, no matter how much a fool she makes of herself. Do not look at me in that way, Centurion, as if I am a traitor to my queen. I saw it in your eyes days ago, in Arsinoe’s house. Do you think my opinion of her is any different than yours? She is an imbecile – a bothersome child with a child’s mind. She forces me to play the fool whenever she is around. But I am not led on by these delusions that seem to have encompassed everyone else in her court. They think Rome is a divided house that cannot stand. They think it is only a matter of time before Pompey’s sons and allies put an end to the great Caesar and his followers. I do not believe in such nonsense. I know what is going to happen, and I want Egypt to be on the right side when it does. When all is said and done, and this war is over, Egypt will be a puppet to Rome, either willingly or grudgingly. Give me the location of the Eye, and I will make peace with Caesar. Let me find the Eye, and I will see to it that Rome never has a stauncher ally than Alexandria. The flow of tribute and grain will never be interrupted. I will even send Arsinoe and her family into the deepest dungeons to never be heard from again, if Caesar wishes, or give them up to him to be born in his triumph in chains. I care not. Whatever Caesar wishes, I will see it done.”

“Those are strong words, Chancellor,” Lucius said, closing his eyes and leaning back again. “I will consider it. Now, let me rest.”

“If Demetrius gets his hands on it, he will take it straight to Arsinoe like the lap-dog that he is. Don’t you understand that? Once the people see her with it, it will be of no use to us.”

“Then I suggest you make sure nothing happens to me,” Lucius replied, and then rolled onto his side and faded off to sleep.

VIII

The moon streaked across the sky on its slow journey and eventually sank in the west. With it, went any of the remaining light beneath the palms in the mountain oasis, except for the dull red embers left in the small cooking fire.

Demetrius and Ganymedes were both asleep, the eunuch snoring loud enough to wake the dead pharaohs long buried under the desert sands. The camels stirred. They were jittery, and Lucius suspected he knew why.

Lucius silently crept away from the camp and into the thick brush. Within the tall fronds and bushes, he made his way around the pond to the trickling waterfall cascading down the mountain slope from the spring several hundred feet up. It looked nothing like the simple portrayal he had seen on the shield, but there could be no question, this was the only waterfall within a thousand leagues. This had to be the place. Earlier, in the light of day, Lucius had studied the mountain and the waterfall several times, taking care not to be observed by the other two. He thought he had spied the most likely spot for the cave to be, and now he would climb to find out if his deductions were correct.

According to the map inscription, the cave was half-way up the slope and behind the waterfall, and that was exactly where he had seen a dried clump of brush earlier. It was a difficult climb in the dark, but he had climbed steeper slopes before under a hail of missiles. He moved steadily upward and eventually reached the patch of desert shrub. The waterfall could have shifted over time, and most likely once covered the spot entirely. But now, the waterfall was only a trickle, and that had allowed him to see the place from the ground.

He parted the scrub, ignoring the pricks and scrapes from the thorns and briars. On the other side, as expected, a web-strewn dark passage sunk back into the rock. It did not appear to be very deep, but after parting the webs and taking a few steps inside, the seemingly natural cave transformed into something quite different. His fingers felt the rough rock wall change to a smooth surface. He struck a flint several times, and blew the sparks into the dry scrub on the end of his torch. The torch came to life, revealing a small square room with carvings and inscriptions on the walls, the colors of which were dulled by layers of dust. The back wall bore the most elaborate of the etchings. A great Eye of Horus symbol covered the entire face. It was identical in color and dimension to the one Lucius had seen on the shield. In the center of the room, on the floor, sat a knee-high stone sarcophagus. It was smooth and devoid of markings and appeared not to have been disturbed over the centuries. Lucius came close to stumbling when his boot sank into a rut in the floor. At first, he thought he had triggered another snare, but then he noticed that it was simply a brick conduit that led back out to the cave’s entrance. The priests who had constructed this place had had the foresight to dig drainage channels to protect the cave from the occasional flood. Aside from a scattering of goat dung on the floor, the room appeared to be just as the old priests had left it. It certainly had not been used by man.

Lucius knelt before the ossuary and took a deep breath. He knew he had little time. He remembered back in the shrine, seeing several inscriptions on the shield referring to the Watchers, presumably the guardians of this sacred site. Whoever the Watchers were, Lucius fully expected to encounter them at any moment. He was certain that he and his traveling companions had been under observation from the moment they had come within sight of the oasis. He had seen the glint of metal in the trees during the long approach across the barren dunes. Someone had been watching them as they approached, as they made their camp, and, Lucius suspected, even now as he climbed up to the cave.

Lucius heaved the stone cover aside and let it crash to the floor. Holding the torch near the opening, he saw the firelight dance across a jeweled object lying on a bed of silk at the base of the ossuary. There could be no doubt that he now beheld the fabled Eye of Horus, the amulet that could bring Egypt together, or tear it apart. Reaching inside, he pulled out the delicate object, letting the colorful necklace dangle from his fingers while the amulet hung suspended before his face, spinning around and then back again. It was indeed a thing of beauty, with a large ruby for the eye itself and strings of smaller gems forming the eyebrow, teardrop, and other lines. In spite of its magnificence, it seemed odd that such a small thing could have such power over a people. He never understood how an inanimate bauble crafted by a man’s hands could, over time, acquire a power of its own and lead both nobles and commoners into mad delusions.

There was a noise just outside the cave entrance, like that of shifting gravel after an errant footstep. Lucius quickly pocketed the amulet, fixing his gladius in one hand while holding the torch with the other.

“Come in, companions,” Lucius said bemused. “You must be tired after such a long climb.”

Lucius was not surprised to see Demetrius and Ganymedes enter the cave. They had followed him, as he suspected they would. He knew that they could never have afforded to let him out of their sight and must have worked out an arrangement between them in which one would feign sleep in order to keep an eye on him. Both men remained near the cave’s entrance, Demetrius holding his bow drawn and aimed at Lucius’s heart. Ganymedes wore an expression of anticipation, his eyes searching Lucius’s person, as if Lucius’s fate were already sealed and collecting the amulet from the Roman’s soon-to-be lifeless corpse was now his only concern.

“Do you have the Eye, Centurion?” Demetrius asked, scanning the room while keeping the bow aimed at Lucius.

“Don’t bother with that,” Ganymedes said quickly. “Kill him and be done with it. We will find it, rest assured. Kill him now, I say!”

“Should I take that to mean, eunuch, that our agreement is off?” Lucius said.

“Kill him!”

But Demetrius paused, eyeing Ganymedes with suspicion. “What agreement is he referring to, Chancellor?”

“Kill him, Captain! Don’t listen to this Roman scum. Kill him now! I command it!”

“Yes, Demetrius,” Lucius continued, ignoring the exasperated eunuch. “This gonad-deprived imp came to me earlier tonight desiring an agreement. An agreement that I show him, and only him, the location of the Eye, and then he would assume power, get rid of your precious queen, and make an arrangement with Caesar to turn Egypt into a lackey of Rome. That’s all.”

“Absurd! Totally absurd! Captain, I order you to…”

But Demetrius was already backing away from the eunuch, such that he could turn his bow on him if he chose. “Is this true, Ganymedes?” he demanded.

“No, of course not!”

“Aye, it’s true,” Lucius said grinning. “He’s a lying sack of mule dung, that one. But then, you knew that all along, didn’t you, Demetrius? That’s why you’ve been leaving those markers in the desert each day. You have men following us, don’t you?”

Demetrius did not answer. His expression was answer enough, and now Ganymedes appeared shocked.

“Is this true, Captain? I gave explicit orders that no one else was to know about the Eye! And just how many of your men did you let in on this?”

“I do not take orders from you, Chancellor!” Demetrius snapped.

At that moment, there was a noise outside the cave. A great tumult. The cry of many voices down in the oasis.

“By the gods, what is that?” Ganymedes started. “Your men, Demetrius?”

“I do not believe so,” Demetrius said, appearing confused. He moved to the edge of the cave and looked down at the valley below. “There are torches down there – a dozen maybe. Mounted men. Our camp is being ransacked.”

“They are not your men, Demetrius,” Lucius said. “They are the Watchers.”

“Who?” Ganymedes asked, befuddled.

“The Watchers. We have been observed from the moment we arrived here. Those men down there, whoever they are, are the guardians of this thing. The inscriptions on the shield warned of them.”

“A two hundred year old inscription warned you?” Ganymedes said incredulously. “Are you saying, Roman, that those men are two-hundred year old phantoms? Preposterous!”

“Don’t ask me how or where they came from. I do not know. Maybe they are some desert cult devoted to the sole purpose of guarding the Eye. I’ve seen more preposterous things in my travels. No matter how they have done it, those men down there have watched over this amulet of yours for two centuries, seeing to it that no one disturbs it.” Lucius glanced at the bow in Demetrius’s hands, still generally pointed in his direction. “It doesn’t really matter where those men came from, now. They, no doubt, mean to kill us. Once they figure out we are not down there, they will head up here. I will be of little help to you with an arrow in my gut. You need my sword. Your only chance, Demetrius, is to keep me alive.”

Ganymedes rubbed his temples, shaking his head as if he were trying to think. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” He kept muttering to himself.

Demetrius appeared reluctant, too. But moments later a shrill cry rang out from the riders below, presumably upon finding their quarry absent. Demetrius sighed heavily, and then finally lowered the bow.

“Alright, Centurion. We do it your way.”

IX

They were the Watchers.

Half Greek, Half Egyptian, they were the sons of the priests of Horus of centuries past. They worshipped Horus day and night, and devoted their lives and their children’s lives to that end alone. One day, the true pharaoh would return, a god in the guise of a man, and he, and only he, would be worthy to wear the amulet, the Eye of Horus. Until that time, it was to remain undisturbed in its mountain home, looking out across the desert for its master’s return. The servants of Horus would be rewarded in this life and the afterlife. They lived in a monastery on the far side of the mountains, unworthy to share the eastern slope with their god. They kept their bodies pure, only defiling them when they must take one of the slave daughters to wife to create more sons – more watchers – to dedicate to the cause. They watched for any and all interlopers, any who would disrupt the sacred ground. Decades passed, often generations, without a single stranger. But when strangers did come, they were shown no mercy. If taken alive, they were skinned, impaled, and left to bake under the hot sun, an offering to Horus.

It had been a very long time since the last offering. Very few watchers remembered the last time, and that was because there were very few old men in the monastery. Once a member of the sect was unable to wield sword or bow – or a slave daughter unable to bear children – they were ritualistically put to death. For the commune could not squander scarce food supplies on those who could no longer serve the cause.

The three infidels that had arrived that afternoon had been watched from the moment they crested the sand dunes to the east. They were watched, and messages were relayed back to the monastery for guidance. The Council of Prophets received each report with alarm, until finally, it was confirmed that the infidels had entered the sacred valley. The Council determined that long sleeping Horus had awoken, and that the time for another offering was at hand. The blood ritual was performed, and twelve watchers were selected to apprehend the heathen and bring them back for proper cleansing and sacrifice.

Twelve men in black robes and turbans, bearing bows and long, scythed blades, rode out from the monastery at night mounted on camels. They came to the oasis, fully expecting to catch the infidels off their guard, but instead they found only an abandoned camp and three camels. The leader of the twelve sat silently upon his camel as his men trampled the infidels’ bedrolls and camp to bits under their mounts. He was the First Prophet, and he had come to personally confirm that the sacred Eye had not been violated in any way, and if so to spiritually cleanse it. Originally, he had not expected to have to perform any such rights, for who knew of the Eye’s location aside from the Watchers? But now, he was taken aback as his men turned up nothing in their search. Could these infidels not be mere wayward travelers? Could it be that they knew the secret of the mountain and what it contained? He had never heard of it happening in two hundred years. In all of that time the cave of the Eye had been kept sacrosanct and undefiled. Others had found the sacred valley, but none had ever found the cave. But it had to be true. Where else could these new infidels have gone?

Collecting his men together again, the First Prophet slowly approached the base of the waterfall. The moon had set, and he could see nothing. He himself had never been to the cave. In fact, he had never dared to set foot on the sacred mountain. He commanded four of his men to ascend the slope. Hesitating only slightly at the order, the men dismounted and began to climb. Touching the mountain was forbidden, and so the four men would have to be put to death once they returned to the monastery, regardless of the fact that they were following orders. The First Prophet knew this all too well, but also knew that he had little choice. If their lives were not meant to be expendable for such a time as this, when the sacred amulet was in danger of desecration, then what were they for?

The First Prophet watched as his men climbed up into the blackness, their black robes swallowed by the night. He waited and listened, but he heard nothing. The cascading waterfall drowned out any other noises. A few of the men remaining with him began to look nervous, and the First Prophet was considering sending them up as well, when a man’s scream suddenly cried out in the night, followed by silence. Straining his eyes to see what he could, he saw shadows on the ledge above, and then heard the tumble of large rocks, as if boulders were rolling down the slope. But it was not rocks that came out of the darkness and rolled to a stop at the feet of the camels. The First Prophet leaned down and held his torch near the objects, and was met with the gnarled stares, and terror-filled faces of the four men he had sent up. Four severed, black-turbaned heads lay in the weeds.

Shouting in alarm, the First Prophet ordered his remaining men to ready their bows for sending a swarm of arrows up against the mountain slope in the hopes of hitting something. But before they could launch their own fusillade, a streaking missile came out of the night, striking one man through the face, the bloody arrow-tip protruding from his lower jaw. The wounded man panicked, reeling on his mount as he abandoned his bow and groped at the wound. Then another arrow suddenly appeared firmly lodged in the thigh of the next man, prompting a scream of agony.

Knowing that he was beaten, the First Prophet ordered his men back. There was nothing more they could do now with their scant numbers. He ordered his men to fall back until they were out of range of the hidden archer. They gathered up the infidels’ camels, as well as the mounts of their dead comrades, and rode away from the oasis as fast as their beasts would carry them, headed back to the monastery with the devastating news, that the sacred Eye of Horus had now been desecrated by interlopers.

The First Prophet did not look back. Dawn was coming soon, and with it would come retribution against the offenders. The infidels could not get far on foot. He would return to the monastery and summon the entire contingent of watchers. The infidels would pay for their sacrilege. They would be cleansed through pain and suffering, and then die on the stake as those who had come before them.

X

There was no way in Hades that the three thieves, temporarily comrades again, would make it across the barren desert without camels. They knew this, but they marched on anyway, one sandaled foot after another through the hot sand.

It was approaching midday, and the mountains at the source of their footprints still seemed close. The three were spread out across the dune, according to their stamina and the lives they had led before. Lucius, a seasoned infantryman who had marched countless miles across a dozen different lands, was far out front. Next came Demetrius, whose legs were more accustomed to standing hours on end for palace ceremonies. Far behind him, came the eunuch, who had seldom ventured outside of the plush quarters afforded him by the Egyptian royals who used him for his administrative talents, not for his physical traits. He stumbled along, kicking up sand as he trudged.

“Do not leave me, Captain!” Ganymedes called as he awkwardly used a rough walking stick that he had fashioned from a fallen limb in the oasis to help him negotiate the sand.

“Move faster, you fool!” Demetrius shouted back to him.

All three assumed that the men who had come to the oasis last night would return, and now their only hope lay with finding Demetrius’s troops, who should be close by – assuming they had found the markers left by their captain. Ganymedes had argued against the logic of leaving the cave, but the two soldiers finally convinced him that, should the Watchers return with more numbers, the cave would become a death trap. Without the cover of darkness, their attackers could easily see them on the ledge and keep their heads down with a hail of arrows while others climbed to overtake them. Certainly, there was also risk in a trek across the open desert, where they would have no advantage against camel mounted riders. But, if they found Demetrius’s men, the odds might turn in their favor. So, they marched across the scorching sand, their waterskins sloshing on their backs, the portly eunuch complaining with every step, and now cursing the royal guard for not keeping closer on their trail. Lucius thought of running the bastard through on many occasions, if only to silence his incessant complaints.

But, thankfully, there was an end to the griping.

Out of the midday haze, a long train of camels appeared, their riders wearing the white tunics of the royal guard. Demetrius’s men had been well-trained, and well-instructed.

“I never thought I would be so pleased with your disobedience, Captain,” Ganymedes said in relief, wiping the sweat from his sun-reddened brow.

It took nearly an hour to get the column’s attention, waving them down by streaming an unraveled turban from Ganymedes’s staff. Eventually, the lumbering line of beasts snaked toward them.

“You have done well, Captain,” Ganymedes said, assuming an amiable yet authoritative tone as the column drew closer. “I will certainly see to it that you are rewarded handsomely. I’m sure I can convince the queen to reserve a position for you commanding our armies in the field, or perhaps you would prefer something more prestigious? How does Lord of Horse sound?”

Demetrius was not impressed with the offer. He eyed the eunuch disdainfully. “Do not insult my intelligence, Ganymedes! You are fortunate not to be impaled on my sword right now. My oath to the queen is the only thing that prevents me from permanently stilling that lying tongue of yours. She commanded me to protect you. That is the only reason you still draw breath. Be thankful for it!”

Ganymedes’s smile faded into an icy stare. “Yes, that is right, Captain. You must protect me. The queen knows and appreciates my worth. And you would do well never to forget it.” Ganymedes then cast a disparaging look at Lucius who was not hiding his amusement at the interchange. “And now that we have found your men, Captain Demetrius, we no longer require the sword of this Roman dog. I order you to slay him at once, that we may retrieve the Eye.”

Lucius smiled gamily, resting a hand on the hilt of his sheathed gladius. He was amazed at the eunuch’s perpetual scheming. Of course Ganymedes wished to spark a confrontation between the two warriors before the column reached them. No doubt, while Lucius and Demetrius struggled to kill each other, the eunuch would run as fast as his stubby legs would carry him to the protection of the approaching troops. If Demetrius won the fight, the eunuch would be rid of Lucius and none the worse for it. Better yet, if Lucius slew Demetrius, Ganymedes would be in a fine position indeed. His chief protagonist in Arsinoe’s circle would have been eliminated. He would then simply order the Egyptian troops to kill Lucius, wrapping up all of the loose ends rather nicely. Ganymedes would retrieve the Eye and return to Alexandria as the sole benefactor of the queen’s good wishes – or use the amulet to forward his own personal ambitions.

But Demetrius foiled this entire scheme when he did not make any moves to carry out Ganymedes’s order. Either he was wise to the eunuch’s designs, or he questioned his own ability to defeat Lucius. Demetrius exchanged quick glances with Lucius, and then tossed his sword at Ganymedes’s feet.

“Kill him yourself, if you are so eager to have it done,” Demetrius sneered.

Ganymedes looked frightfully at the sword in the sand, and then up at a grinning Lucius. The eunuch swallowed once before speaking again. “But…but I have given you an order, Captain! The queen commands – “

“The queen commands me to protect you,” Demetrius replied, “and that I have done! And I will continue to protect you while you travel back to Alexandria to answer for the crimes this Roman claims you are guilty of. You have plotted a betrayal of your sovereign and your people, and you shall live to face the queen’s justice. That, I swear!”

“Really, Captain? You surprise me with your stupidity. The queen would never take the word of this Roman dog over mine.”

Demetrius checked himself while digesting the truth of that statement. “Perhaps you are right. But if that is true, and the queen values your word so highly, then certainly she will see to it that oaths made in her presence are fulfilled. And I intend to remind her of those oaths.”

“What in Set’s name are you talking about now?”

Demetrius grinned. “A promise was made before the queen, that you would pay this Roman’s bounty from your own purse.”

“I never intended to pay him,” Ganymedes replied incredulously. “I’m sure the queen understands that.”

“You will pay him! He has performed his commissioned work, and I will not let him turn the Eye over to anyone until you, eunuch, have paid every last drachma!”

Lucius chuckled at Ganymedes’s dumbfounded expression. “Well, it looks like the queen has at least one honest subject. Fortunate for me that he commands those troops.” Lucius gestured to the approaching column. “Looks like you’re out of luck, Chancellor.”

As the column drew nearer, a team of camels broke away from the main body and rode ahead to meet the three men.

“We shall see about payments, indeed!” Ganymedes cursed as the riders drew near. “There will be none! I will see to it, Roman, that your head is catapulted over the palace walls. If you are not careful, Captain, I might have yours sent over with it. You had best try to appease me if you wish to remain in the queen’s good graces! Remember that I alone have the ear of the queen!”

“Who speaks of the queen!” demanded a voice that came from the camel riders as they brought their plodding mounts to a halt. It was not the voice of a man, but that of a woman. The tall beasts shaded the three men from the sun, the bridle bells swaying near their faces. Lucius saw that one camel was different from the others. It bore a saddle of fine leather decorated with jewels, and its rider wore a trailing purple cape of fine silk. The well-dressed rider removed a thick scarf to reveal her face.

“All hail Queen Arsinoe, Protector of the Two Lands, Goddess of…” one of the other riders began to drone. This was one of the giant black bodyguards Lucius had seen in the queen’s house. The other bodyguard was nearby, too, and both had their immense flat-bladed swords sheathed on their saddles beneath muscled legs. One of them leapt from his mount, took the queen’s camel by the bridle, and forced the animal down on its knees to allow the queen to dismount. She descended from the beast as if she floated on air. When she stood, the stiff desert breeze plastered her silky, purple robe to every perfect curve of her figure. Although she had removed the riding scarf, a veil still covered her nose and mouth, but it was sheer enough to afford a glimpse at the small smile she wore underneath.

Once they had bowed to greet their queen, and were allowed to rise, Ganymedes instantly began to scold Demetrius, obviously for the queen’s benefit. “You did not tell me Her Magnificence was coming. How dare you take such careless chances with Her Majesty’s safety?” Then turning to Arsinoe in a coddling tone, he said, “Oh, Great One, are you injured in any way? I am sure the hot sun has fatigued Your Magnificence. I will see to it that Captain Demetrius is removed from his -”

“Be still, Ganymedes!” Arsinoe snapped. “Demetrius knew nothing about it. I came of my own fruition.”

Arsinoe then walked around the three men, looking each one up and down, all the while followed by the bodyguard holding a shade above her head. She cast a lingering eye at Lucius, and he did not miss the alluring glance that told him she had not forgotten about that night.

“Where is it, Ganymedes?” she finally demanded.

“The Roman has it, Great One. He refuses to hand it over. He should be slain at – “

Ganymedes was cut off by her raised hand.

Facing Lucius now, Arsinoe’s eyes looked at him over the veil with a seductive, almost hungry expression. Evidently the amulet of power was not the only thing on her mind. Finally, she held out a small manicured hand and said simply. “Give it to me.”

Not quite understanding what made him obey so readily, Lucius removed the amulet from his pouch and placed it in her hand. At the sight of the fabled object, Demetrius, Ganymedes, and even Arsinoe gasped with eyes wide. Now, as the realization set in that the object was not just a myth, and that it actually was in their possession, a wave of exultation seemed to come over them.

“We have it!” Ganymedes salivated, breathing heavily and never taking his eyes from the amulet. “We have it! It is ours!”

“It is mine!” Arsinoe snapped with a scowl, closing her fingers around it.

Ganymedes swallowed hard and nodded. “Of course, Great One. And what of this Roman? Shall we sacrifice him here and now in your honor?”

Arsinoe tore her eyes away from the jeweled object long enough to cast an amused glance at Lucius. “No. The Roman pleases us.”

Demetrius cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Great Lady, but I believe my lord Ganymedes offered a handsome reward to this Roman in the sum of two thousand sesterces.”

Arsinoe smiled. “Then he shall have it.”

Ganymedes nearly choked before uttering, “Yes, Great One. I shall see that it is done.”

XI

It took nearly an hour for the entire strung out column to arrive. On Demetrius’s orders, they made camp. Tents were thrown up and camels picketed. Fires were lit and provisions roasted. The queen had brought with her a contingent of house slaves, along with royal tents and a gratuitous amount of perfumes, bath oils, and plenty of extra water for her nightly baths. By nightfall, a small tent city sat upon the summit of a large dune, the torches burning brilliantly beneath a moonless sky.

Lucius ate with the other officers and was generally treated well by these men whom he had fought in Alexandria only weeks before. Ganymedes disappeared into the queen’s sector of the camp, no doubt to ply her with tales of her greatness and how much greater she could be if only she followed his advice.

At the changing of the night watch, the troops began to bed down. In the morning, they would begin the long, two-week trek back to Alexandria. They would start early, before sunup, when they could use the stars to start them in the right direction. They would march until noon each day and then stop to rest during the hot afternoons.

As courteous as the Alexandrian officers had been, they were still too distrustful of the Roman to share their tents with him. Lucius was given a small tent to himself, along with adequate bedding that was far superior to the dusty bedroll that the Watchers had trampled to shreds. It was actually comfortable. The royal guard travelled extravagantly, much different from a Roman legion.

As a centurion, Lucius could not help but cringe at the lack of adequate fortification, something that was routine to the greenest of Roman legions. The Alexandrians had at least chosen to camp on the crest of a wide, round hill, and that was something. However, instead of constructing a proper corral for the camels, the mounts had been picketed in a convenient depression some distance away. As much as he wished to, Lucius could not interfere in the Alexandrian’s camp routine. They were not his men, though he suspected a few of the older ones had been in Pompey’s legions when the late general was setting up puppet states for Rome in the East. Having lived in Egypt for nearly two decades, these men could no longer be called Romans. They wore the headdress and bronze scale armor of the Egyptian royal guard and had adopted the sloppy methods of eastern soldiers, who were either too arrogant or too lazy to fortify their camp each night.

Lucius suspected it would be a vain endeavor, but he could not help but pull Demetrius aside before retiring for the night.

“It would be wise to double the guard this night, Captain,” Lucius suggested.

“I think you overestimate these desert tribesmen, Centurion,” Demetrius replied dismissively.

“Still no sign of them?”

The captain shook his head. “Not a thing. But let them come. I have a hundred royal guard spears, and a score of Nubian archers. More than a match for a few camel warriors. You saw how easily they ran last night.”

Lucius nodded, though he did not share in the captain’s appraisal of their adversary. Before retiring, there was something else he felt compelled to say.

“My thanks to you, Demetrius, for what you did earlier. That eunuch would prefer me dead.” Lucius paused, and then added with a smile. “Besides, I did not want to have to kill you.”

“He would prefer us both dead, I think,” Demetrius replied, glancing at the flourished royal tents whipping in the gentle breeze. “There is no telling what lies he is feeding the queen at this very moment. He pours accolades upon her and fills her with dreams of glory, but he would just as soon slit her throat in the night and make off with the Eye.”

“Good thing she brought those giants along.”

“They are but men.” Demetrius said uncertainly. “And all men can be bribed.”

“All but you?” Lucius said chidingly.

Demetrius smiled. “Yes, when it comes to Arsinoe. Call it one man’s delusion, but I have faith in her. I believe that she can be the queen that I and so many others want her to be.”

“Is that all?”

Demetrius eyed him. “There is nothing else, Centurion. I have served her house my whole life. Duty is inbred in me, not ambition – or lust.”

Lucius gave him a bemused look.

“I am a willing slave to my cause, Roman, and that cause is far greater than I.” Demetrius gazed up at the star-filled sky. “There comes a time for some of us, when childhood fantasies must be supplanted with responsibility and obligation. If all men were slaves to their own inclinations, the world would fall into anarchy. Your Roman leaders understand this. Arsinoe and I were each born into a duty. She to rule, and I to serve. We cannot reject these callings. They are a part of us.”

The night of intoxicated debauchery the duty-born queen had led him through came to Lucius’s mind. “Are you sure your devotion is well-placed, or do you pretend that she is someone she is not?”

Demetrius appeared annoyed at the question, and curtly brought the conversation to an end. “We march before dawn. I suggest you get some rest. Good evening, Centurion!”

And without another word, the royal guard captain disappeared into the night.

XII

The moan of the desert wind gusting against the side of the tent lolled Lucius to sleep quickly, and he slept well, his muscles finally relaxing from the exertion of the past days. But like all legionaries who had spent time in Gaul and Germany, he slept with one eye open, and was always listening for the odd sound that might portend some kind of danger. It was in the dead of night, when the wind had quite diminished, that one of these sounds woke him. The canvas ties to the flap of his tent were being fumbled with from the outside. Someone was attempting to come in and, whoever it was, was being very discreet and careful about it.

The intrusion was not a surprise to Lucius. He had fully expected Ganymedes to try to do away with him at the first opportunity, and the late night assassin fit perfectly with the eunuch’s style. Lucius wondered who Ganymedes had recruited to do it. Perhaps it was one of those giant Nubians, or perhaps one of Demetrius’s men. As a precautionary measure against any such assailant, Lucius had bedded down with his gladius by his side, and his Roman pugio clutched tightly in one hand. Whoever it was would be in for a surprise of their own.

Lucius kept perfectly still as the tent flap slowly opened and a robed figure crept inside on hands and knees. As the figure began to inch its way toward Lucius’s prostrate form, the glint of something shiny caught the glow of one of the torches outside. Lucius instantly came to life, rolling to the side to avoid the assassin’s weapon. He came up in the kneeling position, thrusting his gladius out before him, directly at the interloper’s chest. But a small squeal of alarm stopped his thrust a hair’s breadth before it would have penetrated flesh.

As Lucius watched, the figure slowly stood up, forming a bulbous silhouette against the tent wall. Then, the robe opened and fell to the ground, revealing curves that he had seen before. Arsinoe stood naked before him, her moist lips glistening in the darkness. Between her bare breasts hung a sparkling object, now polished to a fine shine. And now he knew that it was not the glint of an assassin’s blade that he had seen, but the amulet of power – the bejeweled Eye of Horus. Forged by the priests of old, worn by the great pharaohs of Egypt, passed down with great ceremony over the millennia, the glittering talisman now danced against the whisper-soft skin of this nymph who called herself queen.

Suddenly realizing that this, too, could be one of Ganymedes ploys to catch him off his guard, Lucius kept the blade pointed at Arsinoe’s abdomen. Two small hands reached out of the night and touched the blade ever so gently. She then brought the blade to her face and began to kiss it, first on one side and then on the other. In the scant torchlight making its way in from outside, Lucius saw her eyes close as if the sword was arousing her to some new height. Then he felt her hand on his, and she was holding the sword with him, kissing it only inches from his face. Comprehending now, that this was not one of the eunuch’s ploys and that the frolicsome queen had come to his tent purely out of her own lust for him, he began to let his guard down. She pushed him back onto the bedding and violently tore at his clothes until he was as naked as she. In a rustle of cast-off garments, she was suddenly on top of him, and no sorcerer’s potion was necessary to light her carnal fires this time. As before, she smelled of rose petals and lotus blossoms, and her skin was as pure and smooth as the day it entered the world. Arsinoe attacked him with the passion of a starving lioness. She was a ravenous beast, and he her prey. Never one to turn down a night of mindless bliss, Lucius welcomed her to him and gave her everything she desired. More than once, her lithe form writhed wildly against him, her nails driving into his shoulders to the point of drawing blood.

But there were moments during the ensuing hours of unceasing lust that he could not help but think of the aspirations Demetrius had for this woman, and how short she fell from the mark. She was driven by power and lust, not duty. She had no qualms about bedding down with a Roman enemy, should her body crave him, and that was hardly a facet of a god-chosen queen. There was one moment in the wild night of muffled moans that Lucius thought he caught a glimpse of Demetrius’s face, twisted in anger, peering in from the open tent flap. But the next moment, it was gone, and Lucius dismissed it as tricks of his tired or guilty mind.

At some point in the night, Arsinoe slipped out, leaving Lucius to lie alone on bedding strewn with disheveled blankets.

Lucius’s eyes had just shut when he heard a new noise outside. It was the shouting of many voices. Torches danced and a general cry of alarm rang throughout the camp. It was too early for the army to muster for the march. This was more like the tumult of panic. He dressed and armed himself quickly and went outside to find royal guardsmen in various states of arming, forming into squads and taking up positions around the perimeter of the camp.

He found Demetrius issuing orders to his lieutenants.

“What is it?” Lucius asked.

Demetrius shot a venomous look at him at first, much like the one Lucius thought he had seen at the flap of the tent hours before, but then his face softened. “A flaming arrow was spotted in the sky over the camel pens. It is the signal for alarm. Our men there have encountered something.”

“Have you called them in?”

“Yes, I sent a runner but he has not returned. You may have been right, Centurion.”

“Wait,” Lucius said, holding up a hand. “Listen.”

From the darkness that hid the camel corral, came the scream of men being butchered. A thunder of hoofs echoed in the dark.

“Smother the torches!” Demetrius commanded.

The word was quickly passed and the camp went suddenly dark, every man listening intently to try to discern the direction from which the enemy approached. But the sound of the hoofs faded, and all was eventually silent once more. Instantly the men in the ranks began to mumble. They knew what it meant to be stranded in this desert without the essential dromedaries. Stealing the herd of camels was tantamount to plunging a sword into the breast of every man in the camp. Either method would kill just as effectively. One was simply quicker than the other. The troop would not be able to make it back the way they had come on foot. The desert was too vast, the water too scarce, and the sun too hot. It simply could not be done by mortal man.

In spite of the glower that descended on his men, Demetrius kept them all at their posts for the rest of the night. Their only option now was to march back to the oasis, where there was at the very least enough water to sustain them. Having fully resolved to pursue this course, Demetrius quickly reconsidered when the gray light of dawn began to touch the dunes and lift the blackness around them.

“What in Hades is that!” one man said pointing to a thin dark line that covered the crests of the dunes to the south and west.

Lucius heard the alarm spread throughout the ranks and jostled for a position to gain a better look. As the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, the black line became more distinguishable, and it caused every man in the ranks to gasp in wonderment.

A long line of black-clad figures stretched across the dunes in one continuous rank facing the camp. Each figure was mounted atop a camel draped in black skirts. Headdresses covered the warrior’s faces and spear-points gleamed above their heads. They stood silent and motionless. Only the exotic red banners waving in the breeze and the occasional stirring of a camel’s head confirmed that they were not mere statues.

The sunlight also revealed a grisly sight that conveyed the black riders’ intentions quite plainly. The naked and bloody bodies of the ten men that had been guarding the camels, along with the runner Demetrius had sent after them, were impaled on their own upturned sarissas, half-way between the lines. Carrion birds had already lighted upon one of the unfortunate soldiers and were gnawing away at his dead flesh. The appalling display was met with curses and obscene gestures from the Alexandrians who seemed more enraged than frightened by it.

“There must be five or six hundred of them!” Demetrius exclaimed, pushing his way over to Lucius. “I don’t understand. If those are indeed the Watchers you spoke of, how can that many men dwell in such a desolate place for so long?”

Lucius shook his head. “I do not know. Doubtless, they have found a way. There is no chance of marching back to the oasis now. They would divide your men into isolated groups and cut them down at their leisure.”

“I know it,” Demetrius replied in frustration, glaring at the enemy ranks. “Well, what now? Do they intend to just stand there and watch us die of thirst?”

At that moment, Arsinoe appeared, the black bodyguards muscling a path for her through the distracted troops.

“Demetrius,” she said with pouty lips after casting an eye in Lucius’s direction. “Why are we not preparing to leave? What is happening?” Apparently she had only now woken up and had slept through the earlier alarms.

Demetrius bowed cordially to her and gestured to the horde of camel warriors on the horizon.

“Who are they?” she demanded.

Ganymedes, who had accompanied her from her tent broke in before Demetrius could answer. “Those are the guardians of the Eye, Great One. They made off with our camels in the night, thanks to our captain’s incompetence, and now they want our heads!”

Arsinoe looked confused at first and then suddenly frightened.

“Is this true, Demetrius?” she asked anxiously, like a child to an older brother, as if the realization that her life was in danger had come over her for the first time.

A horn sounded across the dunes, prompting the attention of everyone in the camp. As they watched, the camel riders all along the black line held aloft their spears and shook them. A small strand of bells dangled from each spear, and this produced a great ringing clamor that devolved into an incessant clicking rhythm resonating across the empty space between the opposing forces. The bells were followed by a great cry from the six hundred-man army.

“What are they doing, Demetrius?” Arsinoe asked nervously, one hand on Demetrius’s arm.

“My queen,” Demetrius said curtly. “You must retire to your tent.”

“No, Demetrius! I wish to stay with you!” She struggled, but Demetrius motioned for the two guards to carry her away for her own safety, and they complied. The eunuch started to say a word in protest, but another glance at the shouting black-clad warriors made him reconsider and he scurried off after the queen.

As did Lucius, Demetrius concluded that an attack was imminent and immediately ordered men from the east side of the camp to reinforce the southwest side opposite the camel warriors. The royal guard formed two ranks of spears in an arc that hugged the southwest perimeter of the camp, and Demetrius placed the Nubian archers behind them. The black men strung their bows and then selected arrows with large barbed heads from their quivers. A single one of these heavy arrowheads could bring down a camel if it struck the beast in the right spot.

No sooner had the Alexandrians prepared, than the horns and shouting from the camel riders ceased and the great mass of mounted men began to move forward. Slowly at first, the lumbering beasts with their heads and long necks swaying back and forth, picked up speed, prodded on by the spike-tipped butts of their rider’s spears. A swarm of black enveloped the dunes in front of the Alexandrian ranks as it rapidly closed the distance. The living black carpet dipped behind one dune and then reappeared at its crest moments later before overtaking and swallowing it.

The royal guard braced. The archers pulled back on their bowstrings and let the first volley fly. But as the heavy-tipped arrows arched across the sky, the entire line of camel warriors came to an abrupt stop, allowing the score of Nubian arrows to stick harmlessly in the sand before them.

The spear riders now opened file to allow another rank of camel riders to take the front. These men carried bows.

“Shields!” shouted Demetrius.

Every man in the Alexandrian ranks crouched behind his shield and that of the man beside him. Lucius did the same, but not before catching a glimpse of the swarming black cloud of arrows taking flight from the line of camel archers. The first mass of arrows largely missed, striking the dune well in front of the Alexandrians’ position. The camel archers, their range increased by the height of their mounts, simply angled their bows higher and loosed again. The second wave of missiles clapped squarely into the Alexandrian line, like hail hitting a roof. The round shields absorbed the feathered projectiles by the dozen, and quickly became much more cumbersome. A few arrows found the gaps and sliced into men’s unprotected thighs, calves and feet. Several men lowered their shields to remove the agonizing arrows from their legs, but they quickly found this to be a lethal mistake as arrows from the succeeding volley found their mark in the exposed necks and shoulders of the writhing men. Men began to fall, and the shaded sand beneath the shield canopy began to run red with blood.

Many of the arrows overshot, slicing the tents behind into ribbons. After only a few volleys, the sands around the Alexandrian ranks had become a field of feathered shafts. But, eventually, the torrent ceased, or was lessened, such that Lucius and Demetrius could afford longer glances at their opponents.

“Why are they slowing?” Demetrius wondered out loud.

“I’ll wager to conserve arrows,” Lucius replied.

Demetrius nodded. “Then let us take advantage of it!” He waved a hand and shouted to one of his lieutenants. “Front rank, advance! Nubians, forward!”

Responding to the order without hesitation, the front rank of spears ran several paces forward and then planted their shields in the sand and squatted behind them. The Nubian archers followed on their heels, crouching low with feather-loaded quivers bouncing at their sides. The maneuver was performed to get the Nubians closer to get a better shot at the camel archers who had a height advantage from the high perches atop their mounts.

This time, the Nubians selected slender arrowheads, meant to cut through human flesh and light armor. They let the arrows fly, not in a massed volley this time, but individually as they ducked in and out of the protection afforded by the royal guardsmen’s shields.

A camel archer reeled in the saddle, groping at a shaft protruding from both sides of his neck. Another rider’s camel felt the sting of two of the pesky arrows and bolted straight ahead in the direction of the Egyptian lines. The lone rider became an easy target for the Nubians and was quickly dispatched by three arrows driven into his chest in rapid succession. A few others fell, or were maimed, but in spite of these successes, the overwhelming number of camel archers eventually ruled the exchange. One Nubian after another fell to the deadly missiles. Some twitched in the sand through multiple volleys, their glistening bodies absorbing one arrow after another even after the stillness of death overtook them.

Lucius saw one wounded Nubian grope for the rear using his hands alone. An arrow had lodged in the base of his back, rendering his legs immobile. The black man grimaced in pain with every movement, his own blood and sweat caking the white sand to his skin. But a final arrow eventually put him out of his misery, striking him in the back of the neck and pushing his face into the sand.

Then a movement in the enemy line caught Lucius’s eye. The camel riders in the rear ranks, the ones carrying the long spike-butted spears, were moving to the left en masse. Their line was extending to the left, well beyond the Alexandrian’s flank.

“Call your men back, Captain!” Lucius exclaimed, after groping his way over to Demetrius. “The riders are seeking to flank you.”

“Call them back to where?” Demetrius said hopelessly.

“Forget defending the camp perimeter. You are too far outnumbered. You must bring your troops inside the camp to form a final defensive stance – an orbis. Ring your troops in the center. Have them form around the queen’s tent. The outer tents will break up the enemy’s charge.”

Demetrius took only a moment to consider it before promptly ordering the advanced rank back to the line. He then commanded all of his troops to fall back and regroup at the center as Lucius had suggested. The Alexandrians responded quickly, falling back with their shields held behind them against the never-ceasing arrows which still managed to strike a few in the back. Reaching the center of the camp, the four score surviving royal guardsmen formed a double ranked row of spears and shields, completely enveloping their queen’s tent.

As they waited for the coming onslaught, Lucius ducked inside the tent, disregarding the impropriety of entering the queen’s private space unannounced. He had done this to warn Arsinoe, but he saw that both she and her handmaids – and Ganymedes – were already hunkering in the center of the tent beneath two giant rectangular shields held by the burly bodyguards.

Arsinoe’s eyes met his.

“Come here, Roman!” she commanded. “You will protect me from those savages! Come here, I say!”

“You are in good hands, princess,” Lucius replied, nodding to the two large bodyguards. “There is little else I can do here. My sword is better employed in the battle line.”

He then ducked back outside, ignoring her protests, and quickly took three javelins from one of the stacks of missiles piled behind the line of spearmen. He then joined the ranks, ducking beneath a shield just as another swarm of arrows began to strike all around the formed troops.

“When they come!” he heard Demetrius’s voice shout as the arrows pattered against the upraised shields. “Kill the beasts first! Understand? The camels first!”

XIII

The infidels must die!

From atop his war camel, the First Prophet observed the band of infidel spearmen disassemble and withdraw into the close-packed tents atop the flat dune. Whether the fools were fleeing in panic, or simply falling back, he did not know, nor did he care. His warriors far outnumbered them, and it was only a matter of time now before the infidels were either dead on the battlefield, or sacrificed on stakes, and the stolen sacred object back in its rightful place.

Having spent many arrows already, he did not wish to waste those he still had. They would come in handy once the infidels broke and his archers had to ride them down one by one. He ordered the camel archers to draw in closer to the south side of the camp while he personally led his four hundred spear riders to the right, to form up opposite to the east side of the camp. As the archers began to loose a few final volleys into the center of the camp, presumably where all of the infidels had retreated to, the First Prophet half-considered ordering his men to use fire arrows to set the tents ablaze. The stiff morning breeze would spread the fire quickly and would certainly smoke out the infidels, allowing his spears to easily ride them down. But the risk to the holy amulet was too great. Recovering the great Eye of Horus unspoiled was all that mattered.

A wave from one of the archers told the First Prophet that the arrow barrage was nearing an end. He now ordered the spears forward. The sound of a thousand hooves soon thundered all around him, and he could only guess what fear it struck in those waiting inside the camp. A great cloud of dust rose in the camels’ path, catching the wind and blowing in the same direction of their charge, as if the desert god had summoned a great sandstorm to follow them into battle. The rushing spear riders reached the camp perimeter with a cry of war, the bells on their shafts ringing incessantly. Like an ocean wave surging against a coastal rock, the four hundred black riders enveloped the camp, shouting with wild elation. They drove into the outer tents unopposed, crushing arrow-ridden bodies beneath their hooves and tearing the camp equipage to shreds. The obstructions were mere nuisances, but they forced a momentary pause in the charge long enough to allow the dust cloud to overtake the line. The red cloud quickly spread throughout the camp, instantly reducing the visibility to only a few paces and disorienting many of the riders. The line of charge soon turned into a disorganized jumble of camels running in all directions.

But the First Prophet was not disheartened. Before the charge, he had seen a streaming gold banner fluttering above a large tent in the camp’s center. He could just make out that banner now, ahead of him, whipping high above the thick swirling cloud of dust. He shouted to the spear riders near him to press on in spite of the clusters of confused camel riders cutting crossways in their path.

“Drive to the infidels’ banner!” the First Prophet commanded above the din. “To the banner! The banner!”

The riders nearby obeyed. Following his lead, they steered their mounts toward the gold standard and once again the charge was gaining speed. But they had advanced only a few dozen paces when the First Prophet saw a javelin dart out of the cloud to his front and bury itself in the chest of the rider next to him, knocking the shrieking man from the saddle to be trampled by the next rank of camels. An instant later, a dozen more javelins whipped out of the red cloud, striking down more riders. Some of the missiles glanced off of the riders’ crescent moon shields, others carried the shields away altogether. But the riders pressed on in blind obedience to their leader, rushing toward the banner with iron-tipped lances extended before them. More javelins came, and more riders fell. The First Prophet pressed on, expecting at any moment to come upon a disorganized cluster of confused enemy – and then the real retribution would begin. But he was shocked when, out of the cloud of dust, a double row of round shields materialized. The line of shields was firmly stationary and was laced with fourteen-foot-long sarissas held at such an angle that they were nearly invisible to the approaching riders. The First Prophet reined in his mount in time to avoid them, but many of his men were too late in seeing the danger. They drove their beasts headlong into the waiting pikes, splintering the long shafts and burying the deadly points deep within the breasts and necks of their shrieking mounts. Some of the beasts toppled, their momentum carrying their massive carcasses forward to crush clusters of pikemen beneath their own shields. Wounded camels trailed blood everywhere, stirring themselves into a wild frenzy, running this way and that, trampling friend and foe alike. The air was filled with the screams of dying men and dromedaries.

The First Prophet watched the chaos unfold as the battle quickly devolved into a mass melee of jabbing sarissas and spears. A few of his riders had made it through the enemy ranks, and he could see them above the enemy helmets, slamming the spiked butts of their spears down in quick movements onto enemy heads and shoulders. But eventually, one by one, their mounts succumbed to their wounds, and the unfortunate riders sank into a sea of hacking infidels. He saw one large warrior bearing a short sword slice off both hands of one of his riders in two quick sweeps of the weapon, and then finally bury the point of the sword in the rider’s neck. As more and more camels died, the piles of the distorted animal carcasses formed grisly barriers that the defenders readily used to stave off the charge of succeeding waves, and the black riders were now brought down at an alarming rate. Many of them, devout and fanatical followers of Horus since the day of their birth, now faced the horrors of hand-to-hand fighting for the first time in their religious zealot lives. The blood-covered sand, the spilling camel entrails mixing with those of men, the gouged eyes and crushed skulls spewing brains, was too much for many of them. They fled in terror, quite unable to control their own actions.

The First Prophet clearly saw that overrunning the infidels was now out of the question. He had no way of knowing how the combat fared on the other side of the enemy circle, but he assumed the same chaos reigned over there. His men were being slaughtered by the more experienced enemy, and although many of the infidels had fallen, far more watchers were either dead, dying, or fleeing for the dunes. As he considered his next course of action, a javelin struck his mount squarely through the eye, killing the beast instantly. Narrowly avoiding being crushed under the toppling beast, the First Prophet untangled himself from the reins, and then drew his sword from the saddle scabbard.

He cursed himself for ever ordering the attack in the first place, and begged that Horus would forgive him for such folly. The attack had not been necessary. The infidels had been deprived of their camels. The desert would have killed them just as well. He could have kept his riders at a safe distance, harassing the thirsty enemy for days, weeks, or as long as it took for every last one of them to drop dead of dehydration. Then, he could have retrieved the Eye without losing a single man.

He cursed himself again. It was his own vain heart, his own pride that had spurred him to attack. He had wanted his name to be added to the annals of the prophets. He had wanted songs of this victory to be chanted by the priests in the halls of the monastery. Now, if he survived, the council would order his name scratched from the records. He would be purified through pain, and then ritualistically sacrificed before the entire brotherhood.

Only the Eye mattered now. Whether the battle was won or lost, the Eye must be recovered and carried to safety. Perhaps Horus would be merciful and give him a slave’s allotment in the afterlife.

The First Prophet looked up at the gold banner waving above the tent inside the infidel’s formation. The Eye must be in there. It was the only explanation for the vigor of their defense. He then looked at his own bodyguard, sitting atop their mounts. They were stouter warriors than the rest – a score of veterans who had each killed infidels before. Motioning for them to dismount, he called them to him. As the black turbaned warriors gathered around, brandishing curved swords and impervious to the din of battle around them, the First Prophet prayed fervently that their final act in this world would not be in vain.

XIV

There were corpses lying all around Lucius, corpses of Alexandrians, of Watchers, and of camels. Through wave after wave, somehow, Demetrius’s royal guard had managed to retain order in their ranks. Massive holes marked the line of shields in many places, but those that still stood, stood firm.

The black riders were being cut down. They had obviously been trained to fight from their mounts, and they had been trained well. More than once, Lucius only narrowly avoided the stabbing spear points and spikes from above. The camel riders handled their beasts like true masters. But no number of drills could condition a camel for the carnage of a large scale battle, with the thick aroma of blood in the air and the corpses of man and beast piled two and three deep. A few of the giant beasts remained steady, even as others of their kind were vivisected by the long pikes. Many lost all of their training in that moment and broke, ignoring the punishing strokes from their riders.

As the ranks of camel riders began to thin, many continued to fight ferociously. A thrown spear caught one of the pikemen near Lucius in the eye, sending the man reeling backwards. Lucius grabbed the man’s shield and plugged the gap just as a zealous rider spurred his mount toward it. The large shield made the animal pause, and that was enough to allow a pikeman to drive his blade into the beast’s breast. Two more sarissas jabbed up at the rider, dodging his shield and slicing into both sides of his belly. Bloody entrails spilled out of the black robed figure from two gaping wounds, and he toppled from his saddle.

Lucius caught sight of Demetrius, just as the Alexandrian captain slashed one of the black-turbaned warriors across the eyes. Demetrius was now several paces away from Lucius, but it seemed he had been everywhere at once throughout the engagement. His men were fighting well, much as they had on Pharos weeks ago. Now, as then, Demetrius’s steady head was seeing them through. Darting to each troubled spot as fast as he could hack his way there, he inspired his men, led them, fought beside them, and filled the gaps with whatever he could find, even enlisting camp slaves and artisans, who did not need much prodding since their own lives depended on the success of the defense.

Lucius had known a few officers like Demetrius over the years – not many, but he had known a few. Every legion had them, the few unshakeable ones that held everything together when fortune went the other way, the few whose minds were clear and focused even with the viciousness of battle all around them.

Just then, a spear came over the top of Lucius’s shield, taking him by surprise. It sliced past his ear, drawing blood. The missile had been thrown by a nervous-looking black-clad warrior only a few steps away who was now fumbling to draw a sword from his belt. Instinctively, Lucius rushed the warrior, bounding at him in two giant leaps. He drove his gladius deep into the warrior’s abdomen until he felt the man’s blood running down the blade and over his hands. Another dismounted warrior appeared to Lucius’s left. Lucius rammed the shield into the man, knocking him backwards to trip over the legs of a slain camel. A quick downward stab into the warrior’s exposed neck severed an artery and set the man squirming as he tried to stem the flow of blood with both hands.

The riders were attacking in ones and twos now, and were more easily dispatched than the mass onslaught of the first waves. Lucius had that feeling that a seasoned soldier gets when he senses the enemy is about to run. At least, he had that feeling until he heard a cry ring out from the line to his left.

At a weak spot in the line, where only a handful of Alexandrians manned the gap, a sortie of a dozen or more dismounted warriors streamed over the camel carcasses in front of the Alexandrians. These warriors seemed more skilled than the rest, and hacked at the guardsmen with curved swords that looked as though they could cut a man in two with one blow. Within a few heartbeats, the exhausted pikemen were hacked to pieces by the chopping swords. Lucius shouted the alarm back at Demetrius, but the captain was too pressed on his own side of the formation to hear it.

The black-robed warriors had penetrated the lines, and now Lucius fully expected them to turn in one or both directions to attack the ranks of pikemen on the flank. Much to his surprise, they did not. One of the warriors wore a black robe that differed slightly from the others in that it contained subtle inlaid patterns of violet spirals. This man was apparently some kind of leader, because he quickly collected the others to him and, with the sweep of his sword, directed them to rush the royal tent.

With a wild battle cry, they charged forward with swords held high above their heads. Before Lucius could grab a handful of guardsmen to help him, the troop of back-clad warriors had already entered the tent. Lucius and the royal guards sprinted after them, Lucius only imagining what horrors Arsinoe was experiencing at the sight of the crazed zealots slashing at her with the big swords. The tent had already been torn to shreds by the arrow barrage, and he guessed that in itself must have sent her into hysterics.

Lucius reached the tent door and entered to find four of the camel warriors twitching on the royal carpets as they clutched gaping wounds in their bellies. The remaining warriors were facing down Arsinoe’s two bodyguards, whose giant swords were striped red with fresh blood. Arsinoe and Ganymedes were behind the bodyguards, along with a quivering cluster of handmaids hiding amongst the tent furnishings. The big black men had made short work of the first four camel warriors through the door, but now the remaining warriors attacked in a cleverer manner. On a signal from the leader, they came at both big men from all sides at once. One giant black arm slashed with the wide blade sending a black turbaned head flipping into the air, but the unfortunate warrior’s comrades took advantage of the move and drove their swords into the giant’s groin and thighs. The big man dropped to the ground in agony, where he was quickly beheaded by three hacks of the camel leader’s khopesh. The other giant fared little better, managing to fell two before he met the same fate. Lucius and the men with him burst into the tent, and rushed at the camel warriors. Ten of the warriors turned to ward them off, while the leader and another moved slowly toward the frightened queen. Lucius had discarded his shield outside and now held his gladius in one hand and his pugio in the other. He parried a blow from one warrior, hacked high with his gladius to force his opponent’s shield up, and then struck close in with the dagger, splitting the man’s ribs and piercing his left lung. Another warrior came at Lucius from the right, but a lightning quick, back-handed sweep of the gladius knocked the attacker’s sword aside, and another stroke half-severed the man’s arm at the elbow.

One of the Alexandrian guards took a sword in the throat, and another lost both hand and sword from the hacking blow of a khopesh. The tired guard were outnumbered, and they were slowly being overpowered by the zealot warriors.

Lucius heard Arsinoe scream in the corner. The leader had grabbed her, but she had managed to tear herself free, ripping open the front of her garment in the process. Now her bare breasts lay exposed with the Eye of Horus dangling between the dancing flesh. The camel leader shouted something in a language Lucius did not understand, but Lucius suspected it was a cry of elation at having found the sacred amulet. The other camel warriors certainly understood the words. A few of them allowed a quick glance in their leader’s direction, and it proved fatal for the one engaged with Lucius. Taking advantage of the distraction, Lucius stabbed the man through the narrow opening left by the crescent moon shield and then kicked the body out of his way. As Lucius moved in to assist one of the guardsmen struggling to fend off the repeated blows of a hacking camel warrior, he heard another scream from Arsinoe. The camel leader had sheathed his sword and now held a curved dagger in his hand as he approached the trembling queen. Lucius could not get there in time, but then he saw the befuddled-looking eunuch huddling somewhat near the queen.

“Do something, Ganymedes!” Lucius shouted across the tent.

The eunuch seemed startled to hear his name called out in the middle of the melee, but it did spur him to action. Picking up one of the field stools, Ganymedes threw it at the leader. The leader simply batted it away with his shield, but the pause gave Arsinoe time to dart behind the large open trunk that held her royal clothing.

Lucius could see that the pressed guardsman was weakening under the camel warrior’s blows. It would only take Lucius two breaths to dash over to his aid, but there was not time. He had to choose between saving the guard or the queen, and he instinctively chose the latter. Lucius leapt at the camel leader who was too preoccupied with the Eye to notice his approach, but then another warrior, rushing to the defense of his master, suddenly appeared in Lucius’s path. With one fluid motion, Lucius threw the pugio underhanded, striking the warrior squarely in the groin. As the man doubled over in pain, Lucius brought the hilt of his sword down hard on the back of the man’s head, shattering his skull. It had not taken long, but it was enough of a delay to allow the leader to turn and face Lucius’s attack, and he now bashed Lucius aside with a thrust of the crescent moon shield. The black-turbaned leader was a strong man, and the blow was enough to send Lucius flying over one of the queen’s tables and knock the gladius from his battle-weary hand. Lucius’s sword was quickly snatched up by the leader, who now gazed down at him through the slit in the black headdress with eyes burning with hatred. Lucius groped for one of the fallen weapons nearby, but his efforts were abruptly stopped as his own gladius was used to stab him through the arm. The pain seared through him, and his forearm ran red.

A quick glance around the tent told him that he was the only one left alive from the group that had accompanied him. The guardsmen lay strewn about the floor, their blood streaming out onto the queen’s ornate carpets. Lucius now looked up to see the leader invert the gladius like a dagger. He was preparing to kill Lucius with a single downward thrust. But before he could raise the weapon for the killing strike, his bloodshot, hate-filled eyes suddenly transformed into a pained expression. Lucius heard a shrill cry and realized that it had come from Arsinoe. She had stabbed the leader in the back with a pin-like foot-long dagger, and now she stabbed again and again, crying out with each pull and thrust, until she had pierced him a dozen times.

Oddly, the leader did not turn to face her, but simply stared straight ahead. One of the dagger thrusts must have punctured his heart, because Lucius saw the life leave his eyes. Lucius reached up and retrieved his gladius as the man fell to the floor dead.

The remaining camel warriors cried in horror at the sight of their slain leader. They looked fully intent on slicing Lucius and Arsinoe to ribbons, but they paused when a voice from the other side of the tent began speaking to them in a strange language. It was Ganymedes, and he was speaking in a tongue that the warriors obviously understood, because they stopped their attack, seemingly at his bidding. They simply watched as the eunuch moved over to the confused queen who was still holding the bloody dagger. Ganymedes looked down at Arsinoe now with an arrogant expression that Lucius had often seen on the eunuch’s face but never when Arsinoe was around. Then, quite unexpectedly, Ganymedes struck the young queen hard across the face and swiftly took the dagger from her hand. Lucius moved to stop him, but the eunuch quickly had the queen in a firm hold from behind with the dagger held to her throat. The fresh blood on the dagger left red streaks on her skin.

“Do not move, Roman, or I will kill her!” he said. “I know how fond you are of her.”

Arsinoe appeared puzzled, but not entirely frightened. “Ganymedes,” she said. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning, my queen, is something I think even your crocodile brain can figure out before long. Now, take the Eye from your neck and put it around mine.”

“What?”

“Do it, I say! If you want to live, do it!”

With slow and steady hands, Arsinoe pulled the band away from her neck, and turning slightly, draped it around the eunuch’s.

“If you harm her -” Lucius started, but was cut off by Ganymedes.

“Quiet, Roman dog!” He then turned to the camel warriors, who seemed stunned by the action, and proceeded to tell them something in quite lengthy terms in the foreign tongue. Apparently Ganymedes had convinced them that, since he now wore the Eye, they must serve him. Either that, or he had made some sort of promise to return it if they did what he said. Several times during his dialog, he gestured at Lucius, as if he were giving the camel warriors instructions regarding Lucius’s fate.

“If they make one move toward me, eunuch,” Lucius snarled. “Yours will be the first neck I cut!”

Ganymedes gave him a patronizing glance, then cut his eyes once at the queen, as if to imply that Lucius’s threat had no teeth as long as the queen remained under the eunuch’s dagger. He then snapped a two word statement at the warriors that sounded like a command. Whatever the words meant, Lucius suspected they were not in his favor.

The camel warriors began moving toward Lucius, their blood-drenched swords ready to hack him to pieces. Lucius knew that he could not take them all on at once. There were five of them, and his sword arm had been pierced through. But he was resolved to take as many as he could before breathing his last. He was about to try to catch them off guard by rushing them, when a dozen men surged through the door. At first, Lucius thought it was more of the black-clad warriors, but then he saw Demetrius at their head, his sword instantly swinging in a horizontal arc that caught the nearest camel warrior under the chin and struck off his jaw in an eruption of blood and teeth. The remaining four were run through by the royal guards that had entered with Demetrius.

Examining the carnage in the tent and prompting his men to check on the fallen guards, Demetrius gave an appreciative nod to Lucius and then turned his attention to Ganymedes who still held the dagger to the queen’s throat.

The eunuch’s malevolent eyes looked once at Lucius and then back to Demetrius. Then, as everyone in the tent watched, a metamorphosis took place. The eunuch’s expression suddenly softened and the playful grin once again returned to his face.

“Well,” he said, releasing Arsinoe and handing her the dagger. “Good thing I can think on my feet.”

The queen stood in front of him with her hand held out, and it took several moments before Ganymedes seemed to realize that she wanted the Eye of Horus back. The eunuch smiled, removed the amulet from his neck, and placed it neatly in her hand. This was immediately returned with a sharp slap across the face from the queen, her nails leaving three distinct scratches on his cheek.

“Don’t ever put your hands on me again, dog!” she said, angrily waving the dagger before his nose.

“But, Your Majesty!” Ganymedes pleaded holding his hands out in submission. “Why all this venom against me? I simply did the only thing I could think of to save you?”

“Keep that lying tongue of yours silent!” Demetrius commanded.

“But, I saved the queen,” the eunuch said. He then looked over at Lucius. “The guards were losing the fight. I heard the Roman tell me to do something, and I did. I did the only thing I could do. Not all of us are endowed with physiques made for sword work. Some of us must use our mind as our chief weapon.”

Demetrius glanced at Lucius. “Is that true?”

“Damn it, yes.” Lucius muttered. “But I don’t believe his intentions were as innocent as he says they were.”

But Arsinoe seemed to have already forgiven the eunuch. She now put a hand to his cheek. “Oh, Ganymedes, my trusted servant. How could I ever have doubted you?”

Lucius saw Demetrius roll his eyes before reporting. “My queen, the enemy has retreated. They are in full rout. And there are enough stray camels running about that I believe we can make it home. We have suffered heavily, and I’m afraid many more will die of their wounds before we get out of the desert.”

“Very well, Captain,” Arsinoe said, hardly looking in his direction, but seemingly distracted by the mess that her royal tent had become. “Are there any of your men who are not wounded?”

Demetrius looked confused, but answered. “Yes, my queen. A scant few, but there are some.”

“Good! Then send them in here to clean this place up. Get these bodies out of here and arrange all my things as they were before.”

Lucius gasped audibly at the order and then looked at the Egyptian captain in disbelief.

Demetrius almost drew blood from biting his lip before he obediently replied. “Yes, my queen.”

XV

Alexandria had not changed much in the weeks since they had left. They arrived at night, after a long day on the march, the distant flames atop the great lighthouse enticing them to the end of their journey. A battered column of trudging ghouls that hardly resembled a troop of militia, much less the royal guard, entered the city through the Canopian gate and marched through the grid of arrow-straight streets littered with engines of war and makeshift army camps. It was anyone’s guess who the different varieties of Egyptian troops lounging about the shops and houses bore allegiance to – Arsinoe, Cleopatra, or Ptolemy. Those few citizens and soldiers on the streets at this late hour simply watched as the long train of weary camels meandered by in the darkness.

Pitch laden missiles streaked across the sky near the harbor. Caesar still held out within the palace walls. Undoubtedly, the plans to poison the palace water supplies had not had the effect Ganymedes had predicted, and the Alexandrian siege appeared to have made little progress in the past weeks. As Lucius marched along with the column, he considered that Caesar and the legionaries holed up in the palace were probably in much better shape than the ragged troops limping along beside him. The journey back to the city had taken its toll on the brave Alexandrians. Half of the wounded had succumbed to their injuries or the heat of the desert. Most of the others would never carry a spear again. Demetrius took each death to heart, and had given over his own camel, preferring to walk so that another wounded man could ride. Lucius had done the same, not so much out of desire to help the wounded, as wanting to prove to the Alexandrians that Romans could march as far or farther than they could.

Arsinoe and Ganymedes, on the other hand, had shown no compassion for the convalescents. They procured the best of the dromedaries to tote the queen’s personal baggage, leaving many of the wounded without mounts, forcing them to walk. Completely ignoring Demetrius’s tactful warnings about the dangers of upsetting the same soldiers who had fought so bravely for her, Arsinoe became more and more detached. She spent all of her time with Ganymedes, planning out the rise of her new kingdom. Only after repeated pleas from Demetrius did she part with some of the water reserved for her nightly baths to make up for shortages in the troops’ supply. Each night, Arsinoe saw to it that her tents were placed well away from the troops, that she might not be disturbed by the wails of the suffering men.

The amulet had changed her. Either that, or it had allowed her true self to finally shine through. Needless to say, as one man after another died from exposure to the elements, the grumblings of the men reached a new height.

“I have a commission for you, Centurion,” Demetrius said to Lucius, the day after arriving in Alexandria, as the two men waited in the courtyard of Arsinoe’s house for an audience with the queen. “Are you up for it?”

“I can’t imagine lifting a finger to help you ever again,” Lucius replied. “I expect to get my reward from that eunuch today, and then be on my way.”

Demetrius seemed amused at that. “Where will you go?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Anywhere but here.”

At that moment, a new set of bodyguards, that seemed even bigger than the first, announced the queen’s presence. The royal entourage entered the room, having grown considerably from that of only a few weeks ago. It now contained several well-dressed men, Alexandrian nobles trying to ingratiate themselves with the young queen. Word had gotten out about the Eye’s discovery.

Arsinoe took her place on a bejeweled chair with a smug looking Ganymedes standing just behind her. Once again, she wore her royal white robes as she had on the day Lucius was first brought before her. This time, however, she also wore an elaborate gold headdress that, coupled with her face paint, made her look almost like a temple statue. Standing out from all of it, the Eye of Horus hung proudly from around her neck.

“What is the first order of business, Supreme Chancellor?” she addressed Ganymedes by his new title. She spoke as if it were not obvious that Demetrius and Lucius were the only two subjects awaiting an audience with her.

“The Captain of the Royal Guard, and the Roman, Great Lady,” Ganymedes said, eyeing the two men complacently, as if some grand scheme of his was about to come to fruition.

Arsinoe no longer made playful eyes at Lucius, and he suspected that she had quite moved on from him. It might have had something to do with the fact that he had spurned her on the trip back to Alexandria. She had summoned him, more than once in the dead of night, desiring him as before. But, much to Lucius's own surprise, he had refused every time, not wishing to be in the queen's presence, even for a few hours of mindless passion. Sure, the pain in his throbbing arm had something to do with it. But if he was completely honest with himself, he knew that it was more out of a feeling of shame. Though they were his enemies, Lucius felt a soldier’s bond with the wounded men in the royal guard. They had been forgotten by their sovereign. The plight of those men resonated with the centurion in him, and perhaps the injustice reminded him of too many of his own experiences. Perhaps it had hit too close to the mark. Either way, how could he enjoy a night of lust under the queen’s tent while those men, whom he had fought side-by-side with, suffered out in the howling wind and blowing sand?

Lucius now cursed himself for getting too caught up in the ridiculous state of affairs that was Egyptian politics.

“Speak, Captain,” Arsinoe commanded, after Demetrius finished bowing to her.

“My queen, I have come with this Roman to see that his bounty is paid, as was promised by the illustrious supreme chancellor. The Roman has served us well. He has completed his commission. It is now time for us to honor our part of the agreement.”

Ganymedes leaned over the back of the chair and whispered something into the queen’s ear, all the while looking at Lucius.

When the eunuch had finished, the queen blinked once, as if to steady herself, and then said. “We have reconsidered our position in the matter. This Roman has carried his sword in the defense of our pretender sister and has slain many of our followers. He is, therefore, our enemy. He is to be removed from our presence and beheaded at once. His body is to be fed to the dogs. His head is to be thrown over the palace walls that the Romans there might see his fate and tremble at our might. We charge you, Captain, to see that it is done.”

Lucius had never expected Ganymedes to keep his end of the bargain, but he had not expected this. He glanced at Demetrius as if he might have to break away from the Alexandrian captain and try to escape, but Demetrius did not appear in any way ready to carry out the queen’s orders.

“Why, Great One?” Demetrius said simply. This caused a stir among the others in the room who were used to the queen’s wishes being fulfilled without hesitation. But this did not perturb him, and he went on. “Why must we lower ourselves to the deceptive ways of the Romans? We made an oath to this man. We have the means to fulfill it. Is that not the way of great leaders, to honor their word, and acknowledge the sacrifices of those who have served them?”

Arsinoe looked shocked by his rebuttal and Ganymedes stepped forward in anger.

“How dare you speak to Her Majesty in this fashion?” the Supreme Chancellor demanded. “You will carry out her orders, at once! You will do everything she has commanded, and you will report back here when it is done! Is that clear, Captain?”

Demetrius said nothing, but looked back at the eunuch in defiance.

“Your queen is waiting for an answer, Captain!” Ganymedes said, visibly exacerbated. He snapped his fingers and the two giant bodyguards approached to flank him, each cradling a massive curved sword. “And I’d advise you to consider your next words very carefully, Captain.”

“I have considered them,” Demetrius finally said. “I have been considering them for a long time. Too long, in fact.”

Lucius was calculating how they might fare, Demetrius's dexterity and his bandaged sword arm, up against the two well-armed giants. But, again, Demetrius did not move. He appeared completely collected as he stared down the scowling eunuch. Then Lucius saw him make eye contact with the bodyguards. A simple nod was the only gesture he made, and the two giants nodded back. The realization of what was happening flashed across Ganymedes's face just as each guard grabbed one of the eunuch’s feeble shoulders with a meaty hand.

"Treason!" Ganymedes shouted, eyeing the brutes with terror. "It's treason, Your Majesty! Guards, help! To the queen! To the queen!"

The doors burst open, and a flood of royal guards in white tunics and polished armor rushed into the room. Their swords were drawn and their faces fierce, as if they had fully expected to join a melee in progress.

"Your captain is a traitor!" Ganymedes cried at them. "Save me, and save your queen!"

But the soldiers did not respond to the order. Instead, they took up positions around the queen as if to guard her, and then their officer approached and saluted Demetrius.

"Reporting as ordered, Captain," the officer said.

"As ordered?" Ganymedes replied incredulously as he struggled beneath the iron grip of the bodyguards. "He didn't summon you in here, you fool! I did! Now arrest him, at once, and have your men deal with these beasts before they tear me in two!"

"Your orders, Captain?" The officer said, not even glancing in the struggling eunuch's direction. "We can't castrate him, sir. So, should we have this camel's turd skinned alive?"

At this, Ganymedes's face turned as white as his supreme chancellor's robe. His eyes looked across the room at Demetrius and then at the queen. "Please. Please, no! Your Majesty! Captain!" His eyes moved around the room looking for someone, anyone, who might save him from such a fate. Then he met Lucius's amused eyes. A look of hatred flashed across the eunuch's face at first, but then he assumed a piteous look toward even the Roman.

Lucius just laughed. "If you're looking for a man with no Egyptian blood to carry out this task, I'll gladly volunteer. Of course, my sword arm is a little weak right now, so it might take a good long while to get the job done."

Ganymedes’s eyes went wide with fear.

Demetrius smiled. "That was not the commission I had in mind, Centurion."

The captain then approached the royal throne.

“My lord the supreme chancellor will be taken into custody,” he said, eyeing the restrained eunuch. “Others will decide his fate. His devil’s tongue will no longer preside over this court.”

Ganymedes’s expression indicated that he was uncertain whether this was a better sentence than the one the officer had suggested for him.

“You have no authority to make such a -” he started to say, but was silenced by a single venomous look from Demetrius.

Demetrius then turned his attention to the queen, who was still seated, surrounded by the royal guard, and looking quite uncertain about the events that had just transpired.

“My lady,” Demetrius said cordially, before bowing and holding out a hand for her to take.

Visibly breathing a sigh of relief, the queen smiled at him, then took his hand in hers and rose from her seat. “Oh, my loyal Demetrius, bless the gods that I have a servant like you to protect me from such serpents lurking within my court.” She pointed to the supreme chancellor with an upturned nose as if he were now some repulsive, unsightly creature. “You may have that foul wretch put to death at once.”

Demetrius did not respond to the order as she had expected, and his cordial smile did not change as he locked eyes with her. She seemed to shudder under the stare, as if she saw something there that only she could discern. The many years they had spent together, as childhood playmates, as teasing youths, and now as queen and captain, had given her the cognizance to realize when Demetrius was being genuinely amiable, and when he was extending courtesies merely out of propriety.

“His fate is not for you to decide, my lady.”

“My lady?” She replied in an annoyed tone. “You are addressing your queen, Demetrius!”

As Arsinoe suddenly comprehended the meaning of the inappropriate address, her expression faded from that of haughty importance to that of frail dependence. The virulence left her eyes as her would-be kingdom and all of her aspirations of greatness evaporated before them.

“Lieutenant,” Demetrius called to the officer, never taking his eyes from Arsinoe. “You will take my lady Arsinoe into custody. She is not to be harmed, and every reasonable convenience is to be afforded her. But you will no longer obey her orders regarding any other matter.”

“Yes, Captain,” the officer replied, and then moved to take command of the guards surrounding the former queen.

“Is that how it must be then, Demetrius, my old friend?” she asked in a hopeless tone.

“You have left me with little choice, my lady.”

“This crocodile is responsible!” She gestured to Ganymedes. “He advised me poorly from the start. I can change, Demetrius. I can be their queen. I can lead our people to greatness, just as we have dreamed all these years, as you and I dreamed as children.”

“I fervently believe that someday we will find such a leader.” It appeared to pain Demetrius to speak each word. “But you are not the one, Arsinoe. I am sorry.”

Her face went blank, and then she swayed and held her temples as if she might faint.

“I wish to retire to my chambers,” she said feebly, reaching to the officer for support. “I am not well.”

“By all means, my lady” Demetrius said, suddenly formal again. “But first, you must surrender that.”

She now looked at him with scornful eyes, as if she wished to summon every ancient curse of Egypt upon him and his descendants to the twelfth generation. In those eyes, every trace of their childhood affection was lost forever, but Demetrius’s defiant expression indicated that he was fully mindful of this consequence.

Reluctantly, after a long pause, she reached behind her neck and unfastened the chain that held the Eye of Horus. She then swept her arm back and violently threw the amulet at Demetrius, but he caught it just before it would have struck him in the face. The fuming Arsinoe then stormed out of the room, the royal guard keeping time with her every step, her confused handmaids and attendants following like a school of ducklings.

Ganymedes was also ushered out, but not quite as gently.

“I suppose this means I won’t be seeing any of the bounty the eunuch promised me.” Lucius said after the royal party had exited.

“I’m afraid not,” Demetrius replied.

“Now that that queen of yours is no longer queen, you won’t be needing that trinket.” Lucius smirked, pointing at the Eye of Horus in Demetrius’s hand. “Perhaps we could consider that payment in full?”

Demetrius chuckled at that. “I think my people would have me skinned alive were I to give this to a Roman. No, there are others who might wear it. Arsinoe was not worthy of it, but another ruler might be.”

“And I thought you had finally gotten some sense knocked into you. Looks like I was wrong. You’re still a hopeless idealist, Captain.”

“I shall always be that. We must accept who we are, and not try to be what we are not. I shall always be a servant of the Egyptian kings, just as you shall always be Centurion Lucius Domitius of the Tenth Legion.” Demetrius smiled at Lucius’s reaction. “You can deny it all you wish, Centurion, but you are a legionary at heart, not a mercenary. I saw the way you gazed at the palace when we entered the city the other day. There was genuine concern in your eyes, even yearning. Though you may not be willing to admit it to yourself, you can only find true contentment at the head of a century, with your old legion.”

Lucius scoffed at that, fully convinced otherwise in his own mind. At least, that is what he kept telling himself.

“I cannot give you gold, my friend,” Demetrius said apologetically. “But I believe this final commission I have for you will give you what you truly desire.”

Lucius sighed heavily, and then eyed the Egyptian skeptically. “Go on. I’m listening.”

XVI

The palace walls had been battered near the gate. Not desiring to destroy the royal quarters they hoped to soon occupy, the Alexandrian army had concentrated most of their attacks against the gatehouse. But every siege engine brought up for the task was either burned by Cleopatra’s agents outside the walls, or broken to pieces by a sortie of Roman legionaries. The gate house was scorched and shattered in many places. From time to time, helmets would appear above the battlements. Arrows would fly to try to topple them, and arrows would fly back – a never ending exchange between the besiegers and the besieged that had gone on for weeks with little gain.

The Romans seemed as strong as ever, having been reinforced by another legion that had arrived by sea along with an ample supply of provisions. There were rumors that the legionaries had dug their own wells inside the palace complex to use in place of the tainted palace cisterns. Certainly, nothing had changed in the spirit of their defense.

The Alexandrians, on the other hand, were losing hope. Desertion was high among the conscripts, and reports abounded of a great army moving south through Syria and Judea, headed toward the cataracts of the Nile – an army led by King Mithridates of Pergamos, an ally of Caesar’s. As hopeful as the outlook had been all those weeks before, the tables seemed to be turning ever so slowly in the Romans’ favor.

On this night, as the midnight hour struck, a horn sounded from the Alexandrian lines. It was answered by a similar horn from the palace battlements, and the sky cleared of missiles. The gates creaked open, and a double file of legionaries marched out. They were fully armed but not exhibiting the comportment of an attack. Similar files of spear-bearing royal guardsmen stretched from the Alexandrian lines until both contingents met. Together, they formed a long lane connecting the two opposing sides.

At the Roman end, a shrouded figure emerged from the gate, entered the lane, and began walking toward the Alexandrian side followed by a cluster of attendants. At the Alexandrian end, two similarly shrouded figures entered the lane and began walking toward the Roman side, also followed by attendants. Five puzzled-looking Roman soldiers wearing only tunics also entered the lane from the Alexandrian side and began to cross.

“It has all been arranged,” Demetrius said to Lucius as they both watched from the Alexandrian side.

“An exchange of prisoners?” Lucius asked quizzically.

“An exchange of royalty. We are giving Arsinoe and Ganymedes to Caesar in exchange for Prince Ptolemy.”

“Caesar agreed to that?”

Demetrius nodded. “I believe the great Caesar is keeping his options open. Perhaps he believes with Ptolemy at our head we will be easier to negotiate with.”

“Or easier to defeat.”

“We shall see.”

“And what about them?” Lucius pointed at the five Romans.

“They are prisoners. We are returning them to Caesar to show our good intentions.” Demetrius eyed Lucius before adding, “But in all truthfulness, they are being returned to settle the score between you and me, Centurion. Five legionaries to make up for the five I killed on the mole. I think that makes us even.”

Lucius smiled and nodded.

“And now, you must be going, too,” Demetrius said. “My message to Caesar stated that I would deliver six captured legionaries. You are the sixth.”

“Back to the legions for me, eh?”

“But with a purpose. I said I had a commission for you. Here it is. Watch over Arsinoe for me. She will be a prisoner in her own palace. I have no doubts that Caesar will treat her well, but I would not be surprised if Cleopatra tried to have her killed. I cannot be there for her, so I am asking you to fulfil that role.”

Lucius sighed. “I will do what I can.”

Demetrius smiled, seemingly pleased by that answer. He then extended a hand. “If we ever find ourselves facing each other on the battlefield – after it’s all over and you Roman dogs are carrion for the birds – you have my word that I will not spit on your corpse.”

Lucius shook his hand and laughed. “Nor I on yours.”

With a nod of thanks, Centurion Lucius Domitius entered the lane between the lines, and began marching toward the gate and back to his life with the legions.

He had not been paid the bounty for all of his troubles, and that truly was a letdown, but Lucius was not disappointed. In fact, had Demetrius been able to see the surly grin forming on Lucius’s face as he marched down the lane of soldiers, the Alexandrian captain might have had second thoughts about letting him go. He might then have demanded a search of the Lucius’s garments and found the dozen red rubies sewn into the hem of his tunic.

Lucius patted the lumps contentedly, feeling the smooth surfaces underneath. His time in the shrine in the marsh had not been completely devoted to memorizing the map on the shield. He had spent a good hour prying the rubies from the ornate wall behind the altar, and then another hour concealing them within his garments. Let Demetrius and the others have their precious Eye of Horus. Lucius had come to the East for treasure, and now he had it. The rubies would set him up nicely back in Rome, or Spain, or wherever he decided to spend his retirement.

But there would be many more campaigns to endure, and many more battles to fight, before that ever came about.

Content

R. Cameron Cooke
Rome: Sword of the Legion

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